


valse de la douleur

by vlrnlr



Series: valseverse [1]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Outsiders (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics), Titans (Comics)
Genre: Bisexual Characters, Canon Compliant, Cheating, Drug Abuse, Dysfunctional Relationships, Getting Back Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Interracial Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Navajo Roy Harper, No Incest, Romani Dick Grayson, Secret Marriage, Trans Dick Grayson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:53:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24186187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vlrnlr/pseuds/vlrnlr
Summary: They’d been nothing more than children, playing at grown-up games. Never stopping to consider that the stakes could be higher, too. Or, the one in which Dick and Roy marry… in secret. / Pre-Reboot continuity, canon universe with slight plot divergence.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Roy Harper
Series: valseverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745581
Comments: 77
Kudos: 222





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I’m the dumbass that scraps a fic only to regret it and then attempt to resurrect it. And then realise he never had a saved copy. And then start the whole fic over again from scratch.
> 
> My apologies to those of you who have been to this rodeo before, though I promise it’s very different. (Mostly because I don’t remember shit except for the initial concept, but still.) Set around the whole Final Crisis and Cry for Justice shebang, but I understand if you don’t want to do your background reading, not a lot of people like these comics (in my defence, Ollie gets spotlighted in the worst DC stories). More or less canon compliant up until that point, and then it’s free real estate. A quick primer on the relevant canon so far, for those of you who aren’t up to speed:
> 
> Currently, Dick is 28 and Roy is 29. About a year or so prior the Outsiders more or less changed their line-up and Dick and Roy split (they had been living either with or near each other until the Outsiders dissolved, with Dick going between New York, where Roy lived and the Outsiders were based out of, and Bludhaven). Dick permanently relocated to New York after Bludhaven went kaboom, and Roy moved back to Star City. Roy is now Red Arrow and a member of the JLA. Dick is supposed to be leading the Titans at this point, and then becoming Batman a while after, but this is where our canon diverges – Bruce doesn’t die, and Titans Vol. 2 never happened (that was such a pointless book, let’s be real).
> 
> Basically, it’s been a hot minute since the boys have seen each other, is what I’m saying. I am also saying Rise of Arsenal, The Fall of Green Arrow, and Blackest Night can all go rot in hell. The premise of the subplot (and some dialogue) is more or less lifted straight off of Final Crisis: Requiem, Justice League of America Vol. 2 #27, #30, and #31, and Cry for Justice.
> 
> This is a story about growing up, I think.

_Life… is not the thing romance writers describe it; going through the measures of a dance, and after various evolutions arriving at a conclusion, when the dancers may sit down and repose…_

— Mary Shelley, The Last Man

“I have something to say.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that old Uncle Hal was in a mood – and there were a fair few geniuses at the roundtable, anyway. Roy sat up straighter, because when the guy in possession of a near-omnipotent cosmic power source seems a little tetchy, paying attention was the wise choice. Not that he could blame him. Their side had suffered way too many losses in a matter of only days, and while Roy’s brain was taking the complete-and-utter-numbness route, personally, he got that it wasn’t how everybody else would be coping.

“I don’t think I can take this anymore. In fact, how much more _are_ we supposed to take? How many more of us will _be_ taken? J’onn is gone. Bruce is out of commission—”

“Yes, Hal, I think we all know exactly who and what we lost.” It was probably the mention of Bruce that had Clark on the defensive, Roy mused, judging by his tone. Now there was a fight that nobody wanted. He could practically taste the nervousness in the air, though nobody was stupid enough to say a word. Hal, unhelpfully, doubled down, latching on to Clark’s words like a weapon he could turn against him.

“Then what now, Kal? Can you tell me that?”

Oh. Suddenly the reason Hal wanted an impromptu JLA meeting in the first place made sense. Out of pure reflex, Roy’s eyes darted toward where Ollie was leaning against the wall at the back, because the unshaking belief that Oliver Queen could avert any disaster was one of the foundational cornerstones that Roy’s identity was built on, unfortunately. But Ollie wasn’t doing a thing, just following Hal with his eyes, lips pursed, arms crossed. “We start again,” said Clark, meanwhile, emphasising each word. Clearly he saw where this was going, too. “We do the right thing and we _stay united_. For the good, and for all that we hold true. Isn’t that what we have always done?”

“Begin again? Like before? Like every other time?” Hal returned. He sounded incredulous. “In case it wasn’t clear, Kal, _what we have always done_ is obviously not working.”

“What are you saying?”

“You know exactly what I’m saying. I’m saying this won’t hold. Our being _good_ and _true_ isn’t scaring the bad guys back into the shadows anymore. We can’t just keep sitting around, waiting for them to make a move, only reacting when the damage has been done. That’s how we lost some of our best. Our _friends_. And if we stay like this, it’s how we’re going to lose more. We’re the Justice League, yeah? So let’s start enacting some _justice_. We should be tracking them. All the villains. All the evil.”

“Doesn’t work.” It wasn’t until about a dozen fierce faces turned to him that Roy realised he’d said it out loud, and he tried hard not to shrink into his seat. “What? It doesn’t. What do you think we were trying to do with the Outsiders? The world is just not that black and white.”

“That kind of idealism is a privilege only the young get to bank on, Roy. There was nothing nuanced about what the Secret Society did.”

“I’m only saying—”

“No, you know what, the rest of us have stood in our so-called Trinity’s shadow for so long that sometimes, I forget who I am. _I_ am the law in Space Sector 2814. That includes Earth. It’s time I stepped up. Someone needs to stop groups like Libra’s from ever taking root again in the future. Are you with me?”

“I don’t think we can allow that, Hal.” Clark stepped forward, braced for a fight. Hal glared.

“Try and stop me.”

“Hey.” Ollie spoke up at last, pushing off of the wall. Hal whipped around to face him, defensive.

“You too?”

“Me too, what too?” Ollie repeated, sounding nonchalant.

Some of the tension fell from Hal’s shoulders at that. “Against me.”

“No. I’m with you.”

Murmurs rippled through the room, and Roy caught himself gaping like a fish. He searched for Dinah in the crowd, certain he’d heard wrong. But no, she looked just as horrified as he felt. Well shit, he thought, with the resignation of a man facing impending apocalypse. The world’s gone crazy. Hal, on the other hand, seemed a lot closer to sane again, all but smiling.

“I knew I could count on—”

“I’m with you, because you were starting to sound a lot like _Parallax_ again, there, old chum,” Ollie cut in, eyes on Hal, the green in them piercing. “And if you’re planning on revisiting that road, then I don’t want to be on the opposite side this time, because _putting a fucking arrow through my best friend’s heart_ wasn’t fun. And you are _not_ making me go through that again.”

Silence. Hal looked wrong-footed, and a lot less dangerous. Ollie wasn’t backing down. Dinah, thank the gods, saw her chance and ran with it. “Do _I_ get a say in all this? Because last I checked, I’m still the chairwoman of the League. And I say _nobody_ should be making rash decisions when we’re all still in mourning.”

Ollie held two hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry, milady. Hal here probably just needs a little space air.”

Hal still looked frustrated, but didn’t protest.

Just like that, all the tension in the room diffused like air out of a popped balloon. Roy let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Dinah is right,” said Diana, firm. “It is imperative that we allow ourselves time to grieve before we revisit what happened. We will reconvene then.” But there was something sharp in her eyes that reminded Roy of Dick going into tactician mode – this was an exit strategy for the minute. Hal had clearly been marked a threat, and Roy just knew Clark and Diana would be talking about this later. Maybe even with Bruce, too.

“Like we hadn’t had enough with the last crisis,” Mari said beside him, like she was only picking a conversation they’d already started back up again – one of the cool things about talking to her. “Mutiny, that’s exactly what we’re missing.”

She had been whispering, but you could hear the sarcasm loud and clear. “Yeah, tell me about it,” Roy muttered.

“Anyway, listen. Kendra said to tell you to meet her in the monitor room.”

Roy watched everybody but his family – who had taken Diana’s words for the dismissal that it had been – file out in a steady stream, if only to avoid answering Mari for as long as possible. “Et tu, McCabe?”

“She made me promise, okay? It’s Girl Code.”

Roy chuckled in spite of himself. “We’re pushing thirty, Mari.”

“Girl Code is forever, Roy.”

“Be cool. Be a bro.”

She bumped her shoulder against his. “Come on, why is this different from every other fight?”

“She said Carter’s name in bed.”

“Oh. Ouch.”

“Ouch,” Roy agreed with a longsuffering sigh. “I don’t know that I’m in the mood to deal with her drama at the moment, you know?”

On the other side of the table, Ollie was whisper-yelling at Hal, one finger aggressively tapping against the Green Lantern symbol on his chest with every impassioned word. “I get that you want things to change, that’s whatever, your business, but why would you feel the need to declare it in front of the entire fucking team? What was that, a challenge? Do you get that they’re all going to put you down as dangerous, now? You know I’m on your side if it comes down to it – if only to stop you from doing something as monumentally _idiotic_ – but if I’m going to have to choose in the first place, I am going to be pissed as _hell_ , Hal.” He backed up, pacing in frustrated circles in the same spot. “What does that even _mean_ , track all the villains? You want us to start arresting people _before_ they commit a crime?”

“Why does everything have to be about politics with you? These aren’t regular criminals! They don’t _deserve_ a chance!”

“Oh, you mean like the chance we gave _you_?”

“Would you two stop it!?” Dinah stood up so suddenly, her chair fell back with a loud crash that got them both to shut up. “And _you_ —” turning on her husband— “What do you mean, you’ll be on his side if it comes down to it? What about mine? This is my fucking team!”

“No, it isn’t,” Ollie and Hal said in tandem, and Roy winced. Dinah looked crestfallen, suddenly blinking a little too rapidly. To their credit, both Hal and Ollie seemed immediately apologetic.

“Oh, that’s great. That’s wonderful. Exactly what I needed. _Them_ not believing I can hold the League together is one thing, but you two, you’re supposed to be my—”

“Dinah, that came out wrong—”

“It _should_ be your team, Pretty Bird, it _should_ be your team, but come on, you’re smarter than that, you seriously think Bruce and Clark and Diana haven’t been—”

“On second thought,” Roy muttered, “I think I _would_ prefer that drama over this one.”

“Wise choice,” Mari answered, sympathetic. “Monitor room. She said she’d wait.”

So to the monitor room it was. Surprise of all surprises, Kendra actually _was_ waiting when he got there. She had her back to him, wings folded up around herself like a regular person would be crossing their arms, probably. “Shouldn’t you be with your boyfriend?” Roy couldn’t fight the petty urge to ask. “Last I heard he was all banged up.”

Kendra turned, likely glaring under that helmet, Roy couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at him any other way. “He isn’t my boyfriend. I can’t have this conversation with you if you’re going to be juvenile about it, Roy.”

“Fine by me.” Roy shrugged. “I said all I have to say to you. I’d be more than happy to go home now, Lian’s waiting up for me.”

“Damn it— no. Wait.” Kendra exhaled, as if composing herself. “Stay. We should talk about this.”

“Why?”

She paused. Then she took her helmet off, absently turning it around in her hands like a child with a giant whirligig. “We’ve been together a year now, Roy, and I don’t think we should throw all that time away like this – like it was nothing.”

Roy scoffed, but she persisted.

“I’m being serious. Look, I was as worried about Jade as you are about Carter. You always said I was making a big deal out of nothing.”

“Again with that? Fuck’s sake, we’re going around in circles. Excuse me for giving a shit about the mother of my child. It doesn’t mean my feelings for her go any deeper than that.”

“And I’m stuck with half-memories of another life. One where I _did_ love him. Why can’t you use your own logic there and stop holding it against me?”

Roy fell quiet. Fair enough, but… “Did you fight or something?”

“What?”

“Come on, you really expect me to believe you had a sudden change of heart between now and the last time I saw you all up in Carter’s—”

“Yes, okay? Yes. I did.” Kendra glared down at her helmet. “We just lost a lot of friends, Roy. Maybe I don’t want to lose you until I have to. Is that so hard to believe?”

It took a while for her words to sink in, and even then, Roy had to run it back to make sure he heard right. He pinched the bridge of his nose, utterly confused. “You do know you’re being very not yourself at the moment, don’t you?”

“But I _am_. It wouldn’t have been so hard for me to be honest about how I feel about you if you had just opened up to me more, you know. It’s been a year and I feel like I hardly know you.”

“You keep saying that, but it’s not like you were ever any better.”

“Look, let’s just admit that we both could have put in more effort into this relationship than we did, okay?” She sighed. “Let’s admit that, and then maybe we can start over.”

“Start over? Kendra… we can’t just go back to the way things were before. We were making each other miserable.”

“I agree.” At last, Kendra looked up and met his eyes, something steely and determined in her own. “The problem was that you were shying away from actually committing to this, Roy. I know it, and you know it. And don’t tell me we were living together, we hardly ever see the inside of that apartment, and that’s a fact.”

“I have a daughter to raise, okay, what do you want me to do? I can’t keep uprooting her from places she could have called home. She finally has a sense of stability in Star, around her family – she’s eight, she’s starting to understand more and more. To just up and move out again…”

Kendra shook her head. “I’m not asking you to. There are plenty of ways we could make this feel concrete without disrupting Lian’s centre.”

“Such as?”

“Marriage, for one.”

Roy huffed out an amused breath, but when he looked, there was no trace of humour on Kendra’s face at all.

“I mean it, Roy. We’re at that age. We could get married.”

“You—” Roy held up a hand, like he was keeping an attacker at bay. “Hold on a minute. Hold on. Three days ago I was _too childish_ for you and your oh-so-ancient sweetheart. Now you want us to get married?”

Kendra rolled her eyes. “This again. Can you come up with a reason for us not to that _isn’t_ Carter?”

“Well, for one, are you even in love with me?”

She actually laughed at that, a sound so rare it got him to shut up for a minute. “I’m trying my best not to call you childish here, if it offends you so much, but you make it so easy, Roy. Come on. Surely you’re not still so naïve that you think people always end up with the people they’re in love with, are you?”

Despite himself, Roy thought of soft golden skin under his fingertips, shy blue eyes glancing up at him through long curling lashes, the gentle caress of breaths as whispers bridged the miniscule gap between lip and lip.

“No,” he admitted, voice quiet.

“Well, then, I see no reason why we shouldn’t. Trust me, Roy, it’ll put all our insecurities to rest. Stop the petty bickering. It’ll be good for Lian, too – as you said, stability.”

“You’re seriously asking me to marry you right now.”

Kendra set her helmet aside and stepped forward, placing a careful hand on his chest. “Yes. I am.”

“You are _so_ contradictory.” Roy made a frustrated noise. “Like— fuck. What am I even supposed to say here?”

“Say you’ll think about it,” Kendra prompted. “You don’t have to answer right away. I get that. Go home, take the time you need, talk to Lian, tell your family. But I really do mean it.”

“What are we going to build a life together on, if not love?”

She stayed silent for a moment, and turned to stare out at the panorama of unblinking stars outside the Watchtower with distant eyes. “Millions of people figure it out every day. We will, too.”

Then, as if shaking herself out of it, she grabbed her helmet and put it back on. “Sleep on it, Roy. See you.”

As he watched her leave, Roy tried to find a reason to say no, but there was none.


	2. First Movement

How do you start a difficult conversation?

Begin at the beginning, is one option. And in the beginning, there’s a throbbing pain at the back of his skull, as he drifts in and out of consciousness, the feeling of being pillowed against a gentle hold confusing the hell out of him – so much so that he forces his eyes open despite every nerve in his body screaming at him not to. “Easy there,” an unfamiliar voice soothes, and he can feel the hand that was cradling his head move around like it’s looking for something.

It brushes against a sore spot that makes him hiss in pain. “Is that a bump? Oh, good,” the voice says. “Means there’s no internal injuries.”

“Who?” he tries to ask, but with the cotton-candy feeling in his mouth it comes out more like, “Um?” – And so he tries to see for himself, but it still makes no sense. Boy? Girl? Can’t tell. Sweet smile. Sun-kissed skin. Chubby cheeks, cherubic almost. And bright reds, yellows, greens. The colours are fun and innocent, like the circus, like technicolour childhood dreams.

“That’s it, there you go. I’m Robin, by the way. Kid Flash went to get help, told me to stay and make sure you were okay.”

“Robin…?”

“As in Batman and.” Laughter that makes him think of fairies and whimsy, Peter Pan and the place where nobody grows old. “KF called me in for backup. We won, but you took a fall – hit your head pretty hard, there.”

“Robin…”

“If you could maybe say something other than my name, so we can be sure you’re not concussed?”

“Mm-Speedy.”

“Yes, I know.” Robin’s face does this sweet thing where his brow furrows in concern but his smile stays tender, so he looks sympathetic in the most indulgent way. “I wish you’d been Speed _ier_ , and dodged that hit.” The gentle touch withdraws, earning a sound of protest that apparently gets mistaken for pain, because now Robin sounds commiserating. “You’ll be okay, I promise.”

It isn’t love at first sight, it’s more like… potential. He knows then that he’s going to fall in love with him.

Or maybe not that far back into the beginning. Maybe fast forward to four years later, to the sound of cheers wafting out of a high school gym, as the last game of the season wraps up with a home win. Roy waits for Dick to notice him as the rest of the bleachers clear out – “Good game, Grayson,” people pat him on the back, and Dick smiles around the bottle of water in his mouth, waves. He’s utterly magnetic. They’re looking at him like there’s a spotlight there that everybody but he can see, and it fills Roy with a fierce, not entirely rational pride.

’Course, people are staring at him, too, he can tell, but that’s more because he’s around their age and breaking pretty much every dress code in the rule book, with the piercings and leather, in spite of it. It marks him for an outsider, and most are probably wondering why he’s hanging around. Well, no point keeping them in suspense. “Hey, champion,” he calls, grinning as Dick’s head shoots up and his eyes grow wide. Then they soften, and Dick’s fairly _beaming_ , so happy to see him, holy shit. He takes the benches two at a time, and then he’s in Roy’s arms.

“What are you doing here?”

“Wanted to see you.”

“You flew out just to see me?”

“Hey, if you can do, why not do, right.”

“That is a very dubious personal philosophy, Eagle-Eyes.” When Dick steps back, Roy can tell he’s searching his face for signs that something’s up. Can’t get much past their Robbie. Thankfully, one of (evidently) the other boys on the basketball team interrupts them with, “Hey, Grayson, we’re going to Nate’s to celebrate, you coming?”

“Yeah,” Dick calls down.

“I know, I know, you don’t do parties, I don’t know why I bother— wait, what?” The boy does a double-take.

“I said yeah,” Dick repeats with a smile. “Can I bring a friend?”

“You seem a lot happier here than at that private school,” Roy notes, later, sitting at someone’s window-sill and watching in amusement as Dick keeps nursing the same red cup he’d picked up since the evening started. Under the light of the stars and the city that streams in through the open panes, Dick looks… different. His face has lost a lot of the baby fat that used to make him look like an adorable little cherub, revealing _angles_ , now – a perfectly sculpted nose, chin, cheekbones. Curling lashes crown the half-moon of his sky-blue eyes, and a Mona Lisa smile adds this overall gravitas to the pretty picture he makes.

Roy’s stupidly grateful he gets to look his fill, unlike the other people hovering around stealing glances.

“Yeah. I’m glad I pushed Bruce to let me transfer.”

“Because the racist and classist bullying alone wasn’t enough to convince him.” Roy snorts.

He’s expecting Dick to rush to Bruce’s defence with excuses that grow feebler and feebler with every passing year, but for once Dick says nothing. When Roy looks he finds him giving his drink a pensive little frown instead. “It’s been weird between us lately. We keep disagreeing on a lot.”

“It’s because you’re growing up, Dickie. He can’t handle that.”

“I think so, too.” Dick sighs, and it’s so heavy it makes Roy want to pull him into a hug, and then maybe go punch Bruce in the face. “I think he’s… afraid. Of losing me. I’m trying to prove that I’m still there for him first, even if I do spend my weekends with you guys, but… I don’t know. I don’t think he _hates_ you, he just…”

“Doesn’t like us.” Roy laughs.

“Has problems,” Dick corrects, feebly. “It won’t matter for much longer, anyway. Like you said. We’re growing up.” Quieting his voice so no one can listen in, “We can’t be the _Teen_ Titans when we aren’t teens, can we.”

Roy’s head jerks up. “You’re not saying you’ll ask to split, are you?”

“No, I’m saying it’s inevitable.” Dick turns to watch the small crowd dancing out on the lawn. “Donna got into Manhattan U., you know. And Wally and I both have shortlists finalised for when it’s our turn to start sending out applications next year. Garth has Tula, now, you and Mal have the band… Karen’s never been that involved in the first place, and Lilith was the first to move on.”

It leaves a bitter taste in Roy’s mouth that has nothing to do with the cheap beer he’d been served. “Speaking of things changing,” he tells his cup in a quiet voice, “I think Ollie’s going broke.”

Dick’s head whips around so fast Roy’s surprised he didn’t pull something. “Oh, no, Roy…” His face twists in sympathy. “What’s going to happen?”

“Don’t know. He doesn’t actually tell me anything. But I’m not blind. He keeps stressing that nobody can touch my trust fund, not even him, that I’ll be just fine.”

The malaise Roy had been running from all the way to the opposite coast catches up to him again, lodges in his throat. Ollie doesn’t seem to get it, Roy doesn’t give a shit about the money. It’s the fact that they could lose the house. The Cave. The Plane. They’re _home_ to him. Worse, time’s running out on Ollie’s guardianship status, and he still hasn’t brought up adoption. Roy’s been waiting for it, especially now that he’s months away from turning eighteen, but considering the state of things… it doesn’t look like they’re going to have that talk anytime soon.

“You know I’m here for you if you need me.”

That’s why I came, Roy thinks and doesn’t say. Instead, he gives Dick a grateful smile and takes his hand, turns it over in his. “Hey… you think we could move this somewhere more private?”

Dick looks sweetly bashful as he nods. This, between them, is tentative and complicated – not exactly new, not exactly not. Roy’s been interested from the start, but then that had been true of him _and_ half the team. He knows bad odds when he’s faced with them, and so had resigned himself to a doomed longing that would, he was sure, fade with time, but then Dick started showing interest, too. Donna, as special as she is to him, had been a detour – partly because he and Dick had had some stupid argument at the time and Roy had been feeling petty, partly because she was his own age and he hadn’t been convinced Dick _liked him_ liked him so much as admired the friend that was older and more world-wise. But it had always been Dick, first. And when Donna had ended things, saying sorry, but his feelings for her ran deeper than hers for him, Roy had assumed Dick’s eyes would have long strayed to better prospects.

But no. Here they are. He’s letting Roy close some stranger’s bedroom door behind them to shut out the rotten world outside and look for solace in his mouth instead. “I worship you, you know that?” Roy whispers into his chest. Dick’s skin is warm to the touch as he cups his face and coaxes it upward so their eyes can meet.

“Too bad. I kind of want you to be sinning right now.”

Roy takes his time with the love-bite Dick’s neck is practically begging for, tilted like that, then parts with a slow _smack_. “Anything you say, boss.”

Yeah. It’s one option.

Of course, getting straight to the point is another. To the two of them standing there, on that bridge, eyes on the turbulence of the river below. “I can’t believe he kicked you out,” Roy seethes, and the worst part is that Dick isn’t even crying. There’s just unending sorrow in his every move, and no escape for any of it.

“Don’t. Don’t blame him. It was my fault. He needed me and I was late. I’m not supposed to _be_ late, I’m his backup, that’s what Robin’s _for_. He could have lost. He could have…”

“You’re more than just his Robin! You’re his son!”

“No, I’m not.” Dick’s fist curls around the railing so tight he’d have bent it if he’d been Donna. “I’m almost eighteen. He didn’t ask to adopt me, and he certainly won’t now. I’m not.”

“Are you seriously blaming yourself right now? Come on, Robbie, like Gargoyle follows Batman’s schedule. _Oops, looks like you’re late to save Gotham, guess I have to let you kids go_.”

“I took an oath, Roy. And I still chose our mission over his.” Dick’s voice breaks, and he takes a moment to collect himself. “And— and I don’t regret it. That’s the thing. I’m not useful to him if my attention is divided like this.”

“Is it criminal to have a life of your own?” Roy shakes his head. “You act like he owns you.”

Dick laughs under his breath, silent and rueful. “Owns me…? Like a puppy? Guess that makes us strays, then.” His sigh is weary. “Abandoned strays. We’re so far from home, huh, Speedy.”

The melancholy echoes in Roy’s own heart. He reaches out, takes Dick’s hand, rubs comforting circles into the back of it with a thumb. “Maybe we should just find each other.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.” Dick sounds so wistful it sends a sharp rush of protectiveness through Roy and a lump to his throat. He holds out an arm, and Dick goes along, fits under the crook of it like the space was made for him.

“I wasn’t being abstract. Where are you going to go from here?”

“The circus, I guess. Home.”

“What about college?”

“What about college?” Dick repeats. “Bruce cut me off, I can’t pay both tuition and rent with only what my parents left me.”

“You can’t lose out on your future because of him, Dickie, that’s not fair. What about scholarships? You were a Mathlete, a tutor, class president three times over, _and_ on the basketball team.”

“Where would I stay? You’re on the other side of the country. Wally’s not in a position to offer me a place when he’s trying to escape himself. Garth’s clearly not an option, and Donna’s moving in with that new boyfriend who’s older than all of us and— well, frankly, he gives me the creeps.”

Roy worries at his lip, heart hammering in his chest as he contemplates what he wants to say. “Is it a problem, me being on the other side of the country? I mean, what’s tying you to this end, now? Not Bruce, anymore. I know Hudson U. was your first choice, but… would it really be so bad, applying somewhere close to me? Let’s do it, Dickie. Run away with me. Fuck Bruce, I swear I can take care of you. I mean, the band’s not a steady job, sure, but I still got the trust fund and it’s more than enough for two people. And I’ll be homemaker too, so you can… continue on in your overachieving ways at college. I cook better, anyway.”

He can’t even blame Dick for looking that surprised, he’d been so hesitant to put a name on their kind-of-maybe-a-thing. And then Dick smiles, turns so he doesn’t have to hold eye contact and ventures, “You mean it?”

Not for the first time in his life, Roy wonders if Dick Grayson is aware that he is, in fact, Dick Grayson. He’s suddenly struck by the idea that Dick won’t look twice at him given a few years. He may be looking at Roy for now, but the whole world is looking at him. Time will come when Dick turns around and notices.

“Let’s get married,” Roy continues, and he lets the wind carry his words away. It’s Dick’s cue to laugh and say he’s crazy, they’re too young, and how about actually saying the word _boyfriend_ , first, try it Roy it’s not a dirty thing you know, and Roy’s going to laugh along, ha-ha, you know me, never a serious moment—

Except Dick doesn’t.

Dick says, “Okay.” And Roy whirls around in near panic but Dick’s looking at him and he’s looking at Dick and there’s no humour there at all.

“Oh… okay?” Roy repeats, till it sinks in, and words are chasing after each other in his throat, a huge smile making his cheeks hurt. “Holy shit – _okay_? Shit, I don’t even have a ring. This wasn’t romantic at all, I’m so sorry. Shit, if the people we know find out, they’re going to try and stop us, Dick, this is _crazy_ —”

“We don’t have to tell anyone,” Dick assures him, his own smile just as giddy. “You definitely skipped a few steps, there, between our… hush-hush romance and straight up _proposing_ , but. I’m, um. I’m honoured. I’d love to. That is, I— well, I-I love _you_. So.”

He’s not going to cry, he’s not. He scoops Dick up in a tight embrace. “ _Me too_. You’re— everything, you’re everything.” He sets Dick down again, a million ideas racing through his mind. “Dickie, I swear, I’ll take such good care of you. We can finish the move while we wait for March to roll around and you to turn eighteen—”

“We… don’t necessarily need to.” Dick’s toying with his hair in a self-conscious gesture. “I’m still registered as female? I can marry at seventeen.”

And, fuck. He’s as eager for this as Roy is, and who is he to question a miracle like that?

In a whirlwind of hours they race to a registrar, and Dick says _yes_ again, seals it with a kiss and a scrawl of their new names. They share their “first night” in the back of Roy’s car on the road to their future, and sleep is the furthest thing from his mind, even after.

“Vows?” Dick asks, his smile tired in the best way as he plays with Roy’s fingers.

“Hmm. Richard John Grayson-Harper-possibly-Wayne, you are the single most beautiful creature to have ever walked this earth—”

“I’ll age.”

“—And you are sweet, and compassionate, and graceful in everything that you do—”

“So you’ll only love me on my good days?”

Roy pokes him in the stomach, hard, earning a delighted laugh. “And you are _also_ kind of a mess, sometimes.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Roy’s smile mellows as he marvels at the way that Dick looks, sprawled across the backseat, all his. “So please allow me to be your support. Even if I’m kind of a mess, sometimes, too.” From his vantage point – on the floor of the car, squeezed between the driver’s seat and Dick’s legs – Roy can see the red flush that travels up Dick’s neck to his cheeks perfectly. “I promise to help shoulder fifty percent of your baggage, if you promise to help shoulder fifty percent of mine. How’s that?”

Dick’s smile is _angelic_. “Okay. This I promise you and all. Kiss me.”

And Roy has always suspected that Dick was just really, really stifled by Bruce’s rules, but it’s still gratifying to see him take to Roy’s lifestyle like he was always meant to fit in it, like a missing puzzle piece had been found. He doesn’t mind the shitty apartment at all, even if it is a half-hour commute to get to his classes. Gets along with Roy’s friends to everybody’s collective surprise, despite refusing still to touch so much as a drink, never mind stronger. The shows, the parties, fast cars, lifting overpriced clothes – Dick doesn’t mind a one, joins in a few of them too.

Sometimes, Roy even thinks that what he sees in Dick’s eyes could be envy. Like, like Bruce had kept him on such a short leash that Roy’s notoriety as kind of a wild child had always been part of the appeal. He wonders what Dick was like, before it all – if, when it came down to it, they were really kindred spirits. His baby’s got a rock and roll soul. What a waste to have had it bow to some misplaced sense of duty.

They buy a cheap pair of rings, though Dick admits with a disappointed sigh that they can’t actually wear them in public until they’re old enough to tell the others, and not have them freak. “It’s important to you, huh,” Roy notes in sympathy, but the observation still doesn’t prepare him for Dick choosing a tattoo of his initials on the side of his hip for his eighteenth birthday present.

Roy’s laugh is both touched and incredulous – “ _Damn_. Who are you and what have you done with our straight-edged Robbie?”

Dick only smiles, loops both hands around his neck. “I know it’s against Navajo beliefs for you to get one, but… I don’t mind. This way I’ll know I have something to say I’m yours.”

“God, I fucking love you…”

He does. He really does. Even in the face of everything that follows, that always was and is and would be beyond doubt.

How do you start a difficult conversation?

* * *

Ollie all but choked on his root beer, and had to be thumped several times on the back before he could get another word out. “Kendra?” he repeated, incredulous. “And you’re _considering_ it?”

“She _is_ my girlfriend,” Roy pointed out, but it sounded half-hearted, even to his own ears. “Clark and Hal figure we fight so much because I give a shit about her the way I never have anybody else I went out with.”

“Clark has been with one woman for the majority of his life. And the things Hal Jordan knows about gender politics wouldn’t fit on a baby ant. Not to mention _they_ haven’t seen you date people you really do give a shit about, as you so eloquently put it, whereas I have. Twice.” Putting the bottle down next to the barbeque, Ollie crossed his arms. “You never fought with Donna like that. And, you know, much as I don’t think Dick is… good for you, I can at least say that you like being around each other. Does Kendra ever even make you laugh? She reminds me of one of those statues of Thanagarian warrior-goddesses. Just kind of looming there. Scowling. Ready to smite someone.”

“Not funny, Ollie.”

“Wasn’t trying to be. Did you discuss it with Lian at all?”

Roy watched the little lady in question shrieking with glee as she and Sin weaved through the picnic tables dotting the Queen-Lance’s back garden, their Aunt Mia in hot pursuit. “It’s complicated. She took to Kendra just fine at first – though there were, uh, a few too many references to Bat-caves for comfort – anyway, but Jade fucking hates Kendra’s guts, right, so now Lian’s kind of taking her cue from her, no matter how much I coax.”

“Or she’s just that smart.”

Roy chose to ignore that. “Point being, I wouldn’t know where to begin. And I guess that’s why I’m telling you first.”

“Ouch.” Ollie chuckled good-naturedly, though Roy wasn’t joking, actually. Sometimes it chafed to talk to someone who would never really stop seeing him as a kid, but other times it was… kind of a relief. He didn’t need to act like he had all the answers, with Ollie. Which was good, because for this one, he really, really didn’t.

“Kendra’s not that bad, you know.”

“Actually, I _don’t_ know, because you’ve never really brought her over before,” Ollie pointed out. “I know _Carter_ better, and that’s saying something. But even if I take your word for it, and this is just a compatibility issue, are you sure you want to spend your married life working out those kinks? I mean, they’re not even the fun kind…”

“You and Dinah fight sometimes, don’t you?”

“I wasn’t trying to say a solid relationship means never fighting at all, Roy. Also— you’re a lot more accommodating than I am. _Too_ accommodating, if you ask me. I can’t picture you being the reason for most of the conflict in a friendship, never mind a relationship.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’re looking at this through Roy-tinted glasses.”

“I’m your dad. I’ll always be in your corner.” Ollie smiled. “Doesn’t necessarily make me wrong out of hand, either.”

Embarrassed, Roy figured it was time to change the subject. “Where _is_ Dinah, anyway?”

Ollie’s eyes turned pensive. “Something about a private investigation. She won’t talk to anyone but Barbara about it.”

“Ah. I’m guessing this is one of those times when a solid relationship means a little bit of fighting, then.”

“Wise-ass.” Ollie punched him on the shoulder. The back gate opened then, and Roy looked up, but it wasn’t Dinah. It was Hal, and he wasn’t alone. Roy didn’t know what the tall, auburn-haired man was doing here, but he got the feeling it wouldn’t be for lunch and conversation.

“You’re late,” Ollie said to the one, and sent the other a look and a raised eyebrow. “Palmer. How long have you and Hal been an item?”

Ray Palmer – the Atom, or one of them, anyway – blinked in confusion. “How long have me and Hal what?”

“Barbeque Sundays are usually a family and family’s significant others thing.”

Ray’s expression turned exasperated, and he rolled his eyes. “Always a pleasure, Ollie.”

“Trust me, you want to hear this,” said Hal, his tone all business. “Hey, Roy. Have you met—”

“Let’s pick this up later, okay?” Ollie cut in with a hand on Roy’s shoulder and a dismissive smile. Miffed, Roy nudged the hand away.

“Pretty sure the Justice League communicator in my pocket means I don’t get sent to the kids’ table anymore.”

“He’s right. In fact, it’d be great if I could talk to Connor, too,” said Ray.

Ollie sighed. “Well, it’s too late to stop this one now, but I’ll decide whether or not you can involve the rest of my kids in whatever you two are up to _after_ I hear what it is, thanks.”

“What made you think we were planning something?” Ray smiled a crooked smile, though it looked more dangerous than playful. “Word got out about Hal’s little, uh, outburst at the Watchtower the other day, which is why I figured he’d be the best person to turn to about a certain… situation. Only he insists you ought to be in on it, too.”

“Ray thinks there’s another society of villains forming,” Hal explained.

Well, then. Ollie abandoned the chicken thigh he had been turning over on the grill. Roy pulled up a chair, figuring he might as well get comfortable – this sounded like a long story. “Based on?”

“Remember Professor Hyatt?”

“Aw, don’t tell me somebody got to an old man with dementia,” said Ollie, dismayed.

“They didn’t. But he had an assistant, name of Mike Dante.” Ray’s expression turned stormy. “Nice guy, Mike. Retired. No kids, grandkids. Liked to fish. Ryan and I found him in Albuquerque— that is, dead, with evidence of extreme torture.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. The two of us followed the trail, and surprise, surprise – it led to Killer Moth.”

“That small fry? Torture?” Ollie frowned. “No way was he working on his own.”

“Yeah, that’s what we figured. So I returned the favour for Mike—” Roy felt a shiver run down his spine at the cold look in Ray’s eyes— “Thinking I could get a name out of him, but then guess what happened.”

“You had a sudden epiphany that you were, in fact, one of the good guys and shouldn’t be stooping to their level in trying to extract information using torture, regardless of motivation?”

Ray’s face said that he was seriously starting to regret letting Hal take this to Ollie, but he continued. “No. Then he spat out blood and kicked it.”

“You killed Killer Moth!?” Roy exclaimed.

“ _I_ didn’t. I know my own strength. Ryan thought it was suspicious too, so we investigated.” Ray started digging around in his pockets, and pulled out a small disc the size of a penny. “We found this in his neck. Pretty simple tech, we suspect stolen from Belle Reve – it’s how Waller keeps the Suicide Squad in line – this is an implantable variation, but it works the same. Killer Moth was ready to give in—”

“So someone pulled the kill switch before he could,” Roy deduced.

Ray nodded. “And that means, this wasn’t a one-off thing. Killer Moth was under orders.” A brief nod in Hal’s direction. “At the Watchtower, Hal here said he wants to nip groups like the Society in the bud, right? Well. I think something could be budding as we speak.”

Ollie frowned. “Why Hal? I mean, not to doubt his oratory skills, but he ain’t exactly Mark Antony, let’s be frank. Why not take this straight to the Justice League?”

“Because the League doesn’t care about Mike Dante’s. The League will wait for this to snowball before it decides to do anything. If we want to act on a hunch, they’ll expect us to act solo. And I think we could get to the bottom of this quicker – and with a lot less collateral – if we had the manpower of a full-fledged taskforce on it.”

“So you guys want some type of… rogue Justice League?” Ollie shook his head with an amused snort. “Okay. Well, good luck with that, but count me out. I don’t do teams.”

Ray shrugged, turning to Hal. “Told you so.”

“But you do dissent,” Hal urged. “You do cleaning up the regular problems that the supers neglect. Isn’t that what you said when you turned us down the first time?”

“Not dissent for dissent’s sake. And by regular problems I meant activism. You know, _actually_ nipping crime in the bud by improving people’s quality of life so they don’t feel the need to turn to it in the first place?”

“Ollie, I _need_ you on this team.”

“Why? I’m sure all the authoritarian-leaning heroes you guys are assembling for this are more than capable of contributing without one aging non-meta being deadweight.”

“Because I need you to hold us accountable,” Hal blurted out, and Roy’s eyes grew wide, even as his uncle’s turned downcast, fists balling at his side. Ollie, for his part, stood speechless. “Look, you said it yourself. You had to stop me because I went too far, the last time. I need you to keep me human.”

Goddamn. Roy suddenly felt a little like a voyeur, and Ray was coughing into his fist discreetly. “Who and who are an item, again?”

“Damn it, Hal, that’s not playing fair.” There was something uncharacteristically vulnerable in Ollie’s voice, even as he flung his oven mitts down in frustration. “You can’t just— do you have any idea what it took out of me, to—”

He seemed to run out of words for the scope of whatever it was he was feeling, and ended up just turning away, as if even looking at Hal hurt.

Ray broke the silence, in the end. “Well, you two let me know what you decide. I’m going to follow this to Gotham, figure out what Killer Moth was doing so far from home in the first place. Oh – and Hal?”

“Yeah?”

“Speaking of Gotham.” Ray raised two fingers by his temples, in a poor imitation of the cowl. “If word got to _me_ about your little tirade, it probably got to somebody else, too. Just a thought.”

Hal scowled. “I’m not afraid of him.”

“Good – then you can back me up.” They all whipped around, surprised, at the sound of Dinah’s voice. She stood by their picnic table, not meeting anyone’s eyes, and she looked worked to the bone, her skin pale and eyes clouded with bags of exhaustion. Ollie was by her side in an instant, but she sent him a look that was part plea and part reproach, stopping him before he could get either a word out or a hand around her shoulders. “You too. And Roy, please. Maybe Connor should come, as a reserve member…”

“Whatever you need,” Connor, who had materialised at the sight of her, assured her in that calming voice of his. “Come where, and what for?”

“To the Watchtower. For support.” Dinah shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I’m resigning. And if _either_ of you—” glaring at Hal and Ollie— “Say _I told you so_ , I’ll scream.”

* * *

“How’d you find out?” Clark asked, and to be fair to him, he did look sorry that Dinah ever did.

Dinah crossed her arms. “Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t just anything my two morons might have said. I’d been noticing that your communicators kept dropping off the board at the same time for a while now – so I started sniffing around.” Clark shifted, uncomfortable, though Diana stood her ground. “Doctor Irons is very proud of his invention, by the way. Once I got him talking, he wouldn’t stop explaining his hyperspace bubble… and the private meeting room hidden inside.”

“You know,” Roy whispered to Connor, “You’d think the Titans would have more cliquey drama than the League, just because we’re younger. And yet.”

“I can’t believe they would do this to her. It’s disrespect, is all it is.”

“You said it, baby bro.”

“I know what this must look like—” Diana tried, placating, but Dinah cut her off with a sharp glare.

“Like _I_ was elected chairwoman, but you three didn’t think I was up to the job, so you decided to run things yourself from the back room.”

“Dinah, we were only trying to help,” Clark reasoned.

“If I remember correctly, when _you three_ were running the show, Batman created the OMACs, Diana killed Maxwell Lord and _you_ , Clark… you just let it happen.” Dinah turned on him, unafraid. “If you really wanted to help, the best thing you could have done is just _stopped_ undermining my authority! The team put me in charge, and—”

She was interrupted by the teleporter, phasing someone else in, and Roy could practically feel the subtle change in atmosphere. Dinah braced herself, Ollie’s eyes went cold in the way that said he was ready to kill for her, and Hal didn’t seem that far behind. From the look of things, there was no way in hell Bruce’s arrival would do anything but escalate the situation.

But it wasn’t Bruce.

And now it was Roy’s turn to get the whole rug-being-pulled-out-from-under-you treatment.

“I’m sorry I’m late. I’ll be standing in for Batman.” Dick – because it _was_ Nightwing, walking into the room with a confidence Roy had certainly lacked, his first time stepping into the Hall of Justice – Dick said in a brisk, frighteningly professional tone, and then took the seat between Clark and Diana like he belonged in it.

What the hell. What the actual, fucked up cosmic joke of a…

“Nepotism much?” Ollie snorted, breaking the shocked silence when everyone had been gaping at Nightwing.

“Batman had a very close encounter with death not two weeks ago. I’m sure even you would understand,” Dick returned, unflinching.

“First we find out our votes count for nothing, and now we’re expected to take orders from _Robin_ ,” Ollie shot back. “It’s like you guys forgot who actually formed this team in the first place.”

“Ollie,” Roy protested, a knee-jerk response that he immediately regretted – how had Dick taken that?

But if he had even noticed, Dick didn’t show it. “Look, I’m not a member. I’m not even a reserve member, and I don’t plan on becoming one anytime soon. This is just an eventuality that Bruce has been training me to step into my whole life, so if your only remaining objections are personal, how about we save it for later?”

“I don’t answer to you.”

“And I don’t answer to you,” Dick returned. “Now that we have that cleared up, can Dinah continue her brief?”

“I was saying,” Dinah continued, “That I step down. If the seat means jack shit, then I don’t want it – and you can tell Bruce that, Nightwing, word for fucking word.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

Everyone turned to Hal. “Ollie’s right. Dinah and I were here from the start, and I think that affords us a little more respect than this. We voted for her to lead. Shouldn’t that mean she gets to penalise a clear challenge to her authority – that _we_ chose her for – and not the other way around?”

“So put it to another vote.” Ray had gone along with them when Dinah had first asked, but he had stayed quiet the entire time. Now however, he pressed on. “We’re questioning the democratic process – or lack thereof, rather – within the JLA right now, right? So put it to another vote. Those who want Dinah. And those who want these three.”

“Bruce built the new Watchtower. He, Clark and I have done more with our iteration than your initial merry crew ever did. We turned your clubhouse into an organisation.” Diana stood firm. “An organisation to be feared, still, in every country – in every galaxy. Does that not count for anything?”

“That gives you the right to have the whole team in a chokehold?” Dinah demanded. “Like none of the rest of us helped make the Justice League as great as you say?”

“Personally,” Hal joined in, “I’m tired of this focus on ‘the League, the League,’ Diana. How about the _justice_ part of it, huh?”

“So you’re saying you’d do things differently?” Ray prompted.

Hal met his glance, and some kind of understanding passed between them. “You know I would.”

Ray nodded. Then he turned to Dinah, eyes serious. “And you?”

“A vote – an _actual_ vote – for everything,” Dinah said firmly. “Everybody gets a say, and when a choice is made, it’s made. No fucking oligarchy, no… no behind-the-scenes.”

Another sombre nod. Ray turned again. “Ollie?”

“I just really don’t want to take orders from fucking Short-Pants over there,” came the sarcastic response. “But you make solid points on the rest, too.”

“Alright. Proactive justice, a proper democratic process, and full transparency.” Ray raised a hand. “They have my vote.”

“They?” Dick and Clark questioned at the same time.

Ray half-smiled. “People’s Trinity.”

“Hold on— if you think we’re going to authorise a splinter group to act independently, with no accountability to a board or—”

“Oh, well, there goes the authorisation part, then,” Ray cut Dick short, serene. “What was that you said back there, Ollie? A rogue Justice League, or something?”

“We _are_ accountable. To the wellbeing of the people we say we protect,” Ollie said. “Fuck it. I’m down, Hal.”

“And me,” Dinah agreed, turning heated eyes away from Clark and Diana.

“People’s Trinity,” Hal repeated. “I like the sound of that.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this. Reform can come from the inside,” Dick protested. “Why should a few mistakes negate all the good the League has done?”

“I’m sorry, Dinah,” Mari agreed, looking crestfallen. “I… it matters to me. My spot here. That _the JLA_ recognised me, recruited me— it matters. I’m so sorry. But I want to stay.”

“I’m staying,” Kendra joined in. “ _This_ League is established. Meaning it’s stood the test of time. I don’t underestimate tradition.”

“For Bruce,” Zatanna said, quiet. “To repay my… debts. I vote to stay on, too.”

“Well, a freer League has my vote.” Buddy Baker, Animal Man. His smile was playful, eyes dancing. “For whatever it counts. I’m JLI, not JLA.”

“And mine,” Connor spoke up.

Roy tuned out the rest of the Aye’s and Nay’s, watching Dick. To anybody else, he wouldn’t look fazed, back straight against that chair, a determined set to his eyes even behind the mask. But Roy was looking at the other tells. One finger curled tighter than necessary around the file in front of him. The set of his lips, something like a quiver of one downturned corner of them.

“Wings.”

Dick’s composure was too ironclad for him to _startle_ , exactly, but he came close. “Arsen— Red Arrow?” he prompted.

“You’re leading Bruce’s team,” Roy observed. “Who do you have who’s one of yours, specifically? Wally?”

A pause, and then a shake of the head. “Flash is… occupied. Keystone. The twins. There aren’t— nobody discussed new recruits. I’m only interim leader, I won’t initiate that.”

Roy nodded, staring at the table in front of him. He’d figured as much. “Roy…?” Ollie ventured, but Roy couldn’t meet his mentor’s eyes, afraid to see the disappointment in them.

“Sorry, Ollie.” He swallowed around the words. “I’m not leaving Dick alone.”

A confused murmur from a few people around him – but all Roy heard was the sharp intake of breath coming from where Dick was sitting. “What happened to ‘family business, family name’?” Ollie asked, sounding hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Roy could only repeat, and he stood, feeling hemmed in all of a sudden. There wasn’t really much left to discuss. He’d wait at the hangar, or something.

At least the view wasn’t bad when he got there, the sunset painting the sky rose-gold, through the open vent that he was leaning beside. It almost made him feel less shit ‒ almost – and by the time soft footsteps, as familiar to him as the beat of his own heart, became louder and louder behind him, he was more absent than miserable. “Hey,” he sent Dick a tight smile.

“You didn’t have to do that.” With his mask off, Roy could see the tiredness in Dick’s eyes, and he knew he had made the right decision. “Roy, I would never— _never_ make you choose between me and your family, I—”

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay.” Roy pulled him into a loose hug. “It was my choice. You’re family, too.”

“Oh, it’s so good to see you again.” Dick exhaled the words into his chest, hands tightening around his back. “So much happened. You can’t know how much I appreciate this, Roy.”

It scared Roy, how natural it felt to have Dick in his arms again, to just turn and kiss his hair like there was no baggage between them.

“Nah, come on. I’ve been yours to command since I was fourteen, boss. You think that’d change anytime soon?”

Dick stepped back, and smiled. And somehow, Roy could tell that it had been too long since he had last smiled at all. Shit. Shit, shit, fucking—

He had to say yes to Kendra, he decided. He had to, else he would lose sight of all the hard lessons the past year had taught him, and the heartache would have been for nothing.


	3. Second Movement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **IMPORTANT NOTE, PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL PAST**
> 
> This chapter goes into (a) more detail about Roy’s addiction than I usually like to in fanfiction and (b) all from Roy’s POV. Why you should note the first point – as anybody who’s been down my Tumblr would know, I am writing characters who are limited by the medium of comics itself into staying cookie-cutter liberals, and my own politics skew a _lot_ farther left than that. I am for the complete decriminalisation of drug use, and it’s safe to say DC on the other hand is… not. Snowbirds, and every comic of its ilk, I think portrays an overly simplistic idea of addiction and mental health, and that’s because (aside from indies) American comics tend to have an agenda to push – like, these are literally War on Drugs era propaganda, no exaggeration.
> 
> Why you should note the second point – Roy is a biased narrator, and he’s full of self-hatred, at this, and various other points in both this story and canon. He attaches value judgments to drug use, and often says things that imply he thinks being an addict makes him somehow lesser.
> 
> Now, you probably already have an idea of how I really feel about Roy’s situation through my other two fics, in which I did my best to make it clear that Roy having been an addict is absolutely not a character flaw or a moral failing on his part (I hope). But to reiterate, I don’t view addiction as a mistake or an illness or an evil act. It just _is_ , and I believe the best way to help addicts is by not demonising addiction. So please read those scenes in this chapter purely for their narrative value, not for some hidden insight on addicts, or mental health, or rehabilitation. And I hope it goes without saying, but please listen to addicts about addiction, not comics or fic or whatever else.
> 
> In short, **the opinions of the characters do not reflect the opinions of the author**. (Unless the character is Ollie. It’s usually safe to assume I agree with Ollie.)
> 
> Thank you for your time. Back to the program!

How do you start a difficult conversation?

The point where it all went wrong would make a lot of sense. It’d be easy to strip that whole mess of all nuance, pretend it was simple and Freudian and cause-therefore-effect, but the truth is more complicated than that, the truth is always more complicated than that. Ollie— Ollie was a catalyst, though it’s so much neater to pin it all on him. But in reality? The fact is, Roy has always been susceptible to the pull of the scene that comes with the music. And the scene means there will probably be drugs. Period.

It’s just pot at first, which is normal, harmless, fun. Roy should have known to stop when it got more than fun, when coming down from that manufactured calm only made the usual hurricane in his mind ten times worse. When he started to see it as an escape, a cure, even. Pot progresses to DXM, that stuff in cough syrups, Oxy from pain medication that’s an inevitable necessity in the life of a non-meta sidekick. Then ketamine, at raves. And heroin was _cool_ , you know. Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain cool. Romantically tragic rockstar cool.

In hindsight he realises all of them are designed to wind you down, give you that blessed radio silence. He’d never been interested in stimulants – no cocaine or ecstasy or whatever, he had the stage for that, the heroics. So, okay, maybe he had issues he hadn’t known about then. Maybe he’d been looking for help, in them.

Still. It doesn’t change the regret.

Where does Ollie fit in? Well, he takes to bankruptcy like a duck to water, is the thing, and losing his wealth looks to Roy more like he’d lost a giant load off his back. It’s like— like none of it, all the memories they had lived through together on that estate, meant anything to Ollie, not as much as it did— _does_ , to Roy, for whom it had been childhood and home and safety, a place where he belonged. Which makes him bitter enough on its own, but couple that with the non-communication? If visiting in person is too much to fit into Ollie’s schedule, Roy would have still appreciated a call. A letter. A goddamn _postcard_. Something to say he remembers he has a so— a war— an ex-ward. Does he not matter?

The other thing is, Dick is so busy. Between college and Robin’s solo adventures – which are a thing now, Roy suspects to prove a point to himself about Batman – the hours that Roy spends on his own in the apartment, just waiting, nothing to occupy him outside of the band and shows and parties, start to seem endless some days. Speedy was never his the way Robin is Dick’s, so he cheers on Dick reclaiming that from Bruce, while simultaneously nauseous at the very thought of attempting the same thing.

He starts to have the nightmare again. Sometimes it’s his father, a blur of recollections. Sometimes it’s Brave Bow, the scars on his hand intact. Lately, Ollie’s joined the line-up. They all pat his head with a loving smile, and say, “Wait here, okay, Roy, I’ll be right back,” and then they walk away, and he waits, and he waits, and he waits, and he—

And he startles awake, gasping for his breath back. Dick’s not by his side, meaning it’s a Robin night and he won’t be back till daybreak. He’s alone in the apartment, then. He’s alone. Call Ollie, tell him the nightmare’s back. Roy reaches for the phone. But that would be admitting defeat, wouldn’t it, Ollie hasn’t called. He’s alone. If Ollie had wanted to hear from him, he’d have called. He’s alone. The beginnings of a panic attack are clawing at his throat. Call— anyone, it doesn’t matter, as long as he’s not fucking _alone_ —

“Ronnie? Hey, what’s up, where are you hanging tonight? Aw, come on, it’s like one-thirty, what do you got a bedtime? Ha-ha, there’s always a house party somewhere, you just don’t know as many peop— yeah? The Kingston’s? Attaboy, knew you’d come around. I’ll pick you up in a bit.”

He doesn’t blame Dick. That would be stupid and ungrateful. He doesn’t even really blame Ollie, or at least not wholly. He’s just— he’s such a lonely soul. That’s it, that’s all it is. He’s so fucking _needy_ , and he hates it just as much as his loved ones do.

“Baby – I wish you wouldn’t let it get to this point,” Dick coaxes, concern in his voice, after he’s spent yet another morning holding Roy’s hair back for him while he throws his guts up. “I’m glad you’re having fun, but there’s got to be a limit. For your health.”

Roy laughs, not quite within reach of sober yet. “Stop it, stop being _responsible_ at me.” In an exaggerated whine.

“Roy. _Le gardien de mon coeur_. I’m saying this because I care. Please slow down a little? Do something that doesn’t involve alcohol or… stronger, for once?”

“Don’t you have classes to get to? You always have classes to get to.”

Dick frowns, and shit, why does Roy keep forgetting he’s married to one of the greatest detectives in the world? “I can ditch if you want. Is that it, my heart? You miss me?”

“No, I’m saying you’re a giant nerd.” Roy pretends it’s a joke, and he prays his laugh is convincing. “Go, you’re going to be late.”

But Dick doesn’t buy it, and makes a point of sparing more time for Roy after that. And for a while it looks like all’s well, but the thing is, the kindling had already been piling up, just waiting for a match to strike. That’s when the tour from hell comes in.

“It’s one of those things where a big name band decides to show charity to us non-hit-wonders and take us along on their ride,” Roy tells Dick, grinning from ear to ear. “But it’s still something. One step closer to the dream, huh?”

“Which is?” Dick is smiling, but his eyes are sad.

“Name up in lights, a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the whole package. You alright, Dickie?”

“Hmm? Oh, it’s nothing, just…” He hesitates, worries at his bottom lip. “How long are you going to be on the road?”

“About a month. It’ll fly by, precious, especially with finals to study for. You won’t even miss me.”

“I’d always miss you when we’re apart, but that’s not it.” Dick reaches for his hand across the dining table. “Roy… if you… meet someone, on tour…”

Roy’s eyes grow wide, and he hurries to reassure him, “I’d never cheat on you, baby—”

“No, I know. I know. But we’re so young, my treasure, and… I don’t want the ring to hold you back from enjoying this as much as you should be, you know?”

“ _Dickie_.”

“I’m serious.” Dick meets his eyes, squeezes his hand. “If you meet someone on tour, it’s fine. Just don’t tell me about it after, I don’t want to hear. And don’t— fall in love. Save that for me.”

He’s fairly pleading, and Roy can’t say no. “Okay, but only if you’re free to do the same too. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.” He considers it. “And _do_ tell me all about it, actually.” He reconsiders it. “Also, could you stick to women? Uh, pun unintended.”

Dick laughs. “Okay, beloved.”

If only the drama to follow had been about sleeping around. If only. On the last leg of the tour when Roy’s closer to home again, performing somewhere between Coast City and Star, Ollie – at fucking last – calls and says he wants to come see Roy play, if that’s cool. Roy’s surprised, but so happy. God, he’d been naïve. Ollie doesn’t like rock, there was no way he wanted to come for the music.

Their fifteen-minute slot before the main act goes on flies by like a breeze, and then Roy heads backstage, excited to see Ollie again in spite of himself.

“Great show, kid.”

“Yeah, right.” Roy laughs, too busy dismantling his drum set to turn and face him. “You hate loud—”

And then he does turn. Ollie’s not alone. There’s a stunning young woman at his side – short hair and blue eyes and leather jacket, so different from the prissy ones Roy’s used to Ollie dating – and Ollie has one casual arm just wrapped around her shoulder like it belongs there.

“It’s so good to see you again, Roy!” Ollie gives him a bear hug that Roy’s too startled to return. “I wanted to introduce you – this is Dinah Lance, my girlfriend.”

“You might know me better as Black Canary.” Dinah winks, holding out a hand that Roy only automatically shakes. “Dig the set back there, exactly my kind of sound.”

“Your… girlfriend.” Roy shakes himself out of it. “Black Canary. Right. Uh, I’m glad you liked it. You look different without the wig.” It’s all he can think to say.

“Yeah ‒ yeah, it’s good stuff. Makes me miss it myself.”

“Miss… the stage?” Roy asks, incredulous.

“I was the vocalist for this all-girl act called Shrill.” Dinah grins. “Nothing as hard as you guys lean, though, it was a lot more old-school.”

“I love Shrill.” Roy eyes her again head to toe. God, it’s not fair. He wants to hate her. He really, really does. But she doesn’t hold herself like those other uptight rich women Ollie has subjected him to in the past did, and she’s the Black goddamn Canary, and she _played_. She’s actually cool. It’s not fair.

“Knew you’d get along.” Ollie laughs, oblivious, his hand moving to Dinah’s waist. “I meant to tell you as soon as my Pretty Bird finally said yes, but things have been kind of busy—”

“He and Hal are on a little tour of their own.” Dinah rolls her eyes. “What was it, again? Looking for America?”

So she’s on a first-name basis with Hal as well. And what the hell is a _Pretty Bird_? Because Dinah is Black _Canary_? Since when is Ollie that fucking cheesy?

Ollie says, “Nothing as lofty as that, I’d just wanted to revisit a few concepts I used to believe in, and Hal came along for the ride… Dinah, too, whenever our paths crossed…”

 _Dinah, too_. Hal and fucking _Dinah, too_. But not him. Not even a word to say this was a thing.

“Anyway, you free now, kiddo? Want to grab lunch somewhere?”

“I…” Roy can’t breathe. Lunch with Ollie and… her. It’s happening again, isn’t it. He’s being left behind once more. “Yeah, I’ll— be right back.”

He all but hightails it out of there, back to the stage, pushing past tech people to get as close to an amp as possible. Places a hand against it until he can feel the reverb in his fucking _skull_. Until the music is so loud, it hides the gasping.

“You look like you could use more than a drink,” someone notes at the after-party, and Roy nods, slow and absent.

“What do you got?”

“Molly.”

“No, thanks. Hey, you know if anyone has H?”

“Sure, the guys on what’s-their-name, the ones that came on before your slot last night. You know them?”

No, but Roy can fuck his way into a stash, not a problem. And then… calm, blessed, blessed calm. Nothing matters for the moment. Not getting abandoned for the third time in his life. Not how Dick deserves so much better than— him, than this. For once, at least for once, he really, truly, _does not care_.

“Pretty Bird, huh…” Roy whispers into Dick’s skin the first night back, plays with short, dark hair, watches those eerily similar blue eyes watching him.

“Pretty what?” Dick snorts, amused.

Roy grins, and he wonders if it looks as slow and reckless as it feels. “Pretty Bird. You like it? I stole it for you.”

God, Dick. Poor Dick. Innocent casualty to Roy’s own self-destruction. He only ever loved him. He _only_ ever loved him.

The trust fund was supposed to give Dick the time and space he needs to focus on college and graduating, so he gets the respectable career he’s always been destined for. But nothing matters when Roy’s fiending, not Dick’s life, certainly not his own life, and no future exists except for the next fix. Corey fucking OD’s, selfish bastard, and without a vocalist the band falls apart. There goes making money from shows. Dick and Roy start to fight. Like, really fight, not the bickering they used to have only once in a blue moon over stupid things like toothpaste.

“Three thousand dollars doesn’t just magically dissolve into thin air, Roy, I’m only asking you to be honest with me, if you needed the extra cash—”

“I didn’t take your fucking money, okay! And aren’t we married? Aren’t we supposed to be sharing—”

Dick has no choice but to start working part-time – God knows Roy’s too out of it 24/7 now, to get a job himself. So now he has work and study and Robin on his plate, not to mention trying to salvage their marriage all on his own in the face of Roy’s drastic new mood-swings. The first time Roy reduces him to tears is when he decides he needs to stay away before he keeps hurting the love of his life. He stays out later and later, and it gets to the point where he doesn’t even bother going home anymore.

Problem is, Dick’s still the one people call to come haul his sorry ass out, when he’s too far gone to drive himself. Still the one who pays bail, when Roy inevitably lands himself behind bars. The one who fishes him out of the figurative and not so figurative gutter. The one who stays at his bedside when Roy needs twenty stitches after he crashes his motorcycle into a tree because he hadn’t even been able to see straight.

“You’re never here. Even when you seem to be, you’re not.” Dick’s crying into his shoulder, but he still holds him to stop the shivering, it’s so fucking cold, despite the heavy summer night.

“Don’t understand why you’re still here,” Roy slurs.

“Shut up. Don’t you dare. I promised you I’d take fifty percent, Roy, I promised.”

Roy laughs, and it’s not just the drugs talking. “Fifty percent? Please. You can’t even handle a _fraction_.”

Dick runs a trembling hand along the track-marks on the inside of Roy’s arm, and says nothing but, “I’m sorry…”

So of course, when it all catches up to him at last, and Hal dumps him at Dinah’s because he’s smart enough to know Ollie won’t be any help to Roy in the mood he’s in, it’s Dick that Dinah calls to help weather the crash. Roy can only hear snatches of conversation through the haze, “I’m sorry to bother you, I just thought he needed a friend, withdrawal isn’t pleasant,” “No, thank you, thank you, I’m so grateful you did,” and then Dick’s by his side, as per. Day after day, night after night, for as long as it took. Holding his hand when the pain gets too bad, helping clean him in less than pleasant states. Rocking him to sleep like a goddamn child when all he can do is cry, so confused about how it could have all gone so terribly wrong.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Roy whispers, mind too shattered to filter anything. “I was supposed to keep being… worth looking at like I’m something… the way you used to look at me…”

“Shh, shh, look at _me_ ,” Dick soothes, and Roy still doesn’t understand how he can cry like this, like Roy’s pain is his own pain. “I. Love. You. So much…”

He must think Roy’s asleep, because he’s talking to Dinah without lowering his voice – “I’m so scared, going off it Cold Turkey isn’t safe, Dinah…”

“I know. But he won’t say yes to rehab, you know him better than that…”

“I can try to convince him…”

“Please do. And Dick, get some rest, I only called you so he’d have some company, you’re too young to be dealing with—”

“I won’t. I won’t go.” Roy grabs Dick’s wrist tight, the next time he’s kneeling by his bed, eyes imploring. “Dick, you don’t know what it’s like. I’ve had friends— we don’t have rich kid privileges anymore, do you have any idea what state-run rehab looks like? They run it like a goddamn prison, I won’t be allowed visitors for _months_ , I-I’ll be all alone…”

A wave of nausea assaults him, which doesn’t help his case, and even as Dick hurries to help Roy knows this isn’t the last he’ll hear of it.

Sure enough – after days in pure hell when Roy’s recovering at last – Dick and Dinah stage an intervention. “They have resources and training that neither of us do, Roy,” Dinah reasons kindly. “We just want you to get through this safely, and with less likelihood of relapse.”

“ _No_. No, and I won’t hear another word about it, I’m _fine_.” Roy clenches his fists. “I just— I just want to go home, now.” Wherever that even is anymore.

“The detox isn’t the end of it, Roy, you know that,” Dinah insists. “People have died attempting to do this on their own. I don’t know if it’s that you’re trying to prove something to Ollie, but—”

“What do you even care!? You’re not my family, you came out of fucking nowhere.”

But Dinah has too many years on him to cave to what’s essentially a tantrum. Damn it. “Believe me, I know better than anyone else that the system is flawed. But it’s better than nothing. Even if we haven’t known each other long, I care about you, Roy, and not just because of Ollie. I think you’re the bravest soul I have ever met to go through what you did. And I think you’re a good kid. This wasn’t some bad choice on your part, it’s an illness, like any other, and it needs _treatment_. Proper treatment.”

“You can’t make me. I’m nineteen, and I don’t consent.”

“There are ways.” Dick isn’t meeting anyone’s eyes, staring out of the kitchen window, and playing with his fingers the way he does when he’s genuinely distressed. “In dire circumstances, you can get a court order with parental or guardian—”

“I’m an orphan! And Ollie’s not my guardian anymore—”

“—Or… or spousal consent, Roy,” Dick finishes in a quiet voice, and it’s like the whole world stops.

“You wouldn’t.” Roy’s horrified, he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You _wouldn’t_ , Dick, you said you fucking loved me—”

“I’d do it _because_ I love you, damn it!” Dick snaps, slamming both hands on the table in front of him. He finally turns, and his eyes are over-bright with tears. “Baby, you need help.”

“I’ll be miserable in there, you don’t understand— don’t you want me to be happy?”

“I want you to stop hurting. That’s not always the same thing.” Dick’s voice breaks, and Roy feels utterly betrayed. His nails are digging into his palm, his teeth clenched.

“If you do this I will never, _ever_ forgive you.”

“So don’t make me.” Dick’s crying now, but he doesn’t budge. “Let Dinah check you in. Please, Roy. Please.”

Dinah, who’s been listening in horrified silence, finally turns back to Roy, although she can’t seem to help the nervous glance in Dick’s direction. “Y-Yeah. It’ll be over before you know it.”

He’s always known bad odds when he’s faced with them. He slips his hands into his pockets, something shuttering closed behind his eyes. “—Well. Guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the Bat-tree,” he spits out, and then he storms off to the room Dinah’s been letting him sleep in to pack up, ignoring the sobs that follow him all the way.

He’d be loath to admit it until he had grown, some, but if anything about rehab helped, it was the counselling. It’s almost funny, how much it turns out is wrong with him. Abandonment issues, a pleaser personality that’s way too sensitive to rejection as a result, thrill-chasing for the attention and the numbness, and what do you know – deep-seated anxiety. He’d been instinctively self-medicating, because of course he had. And now he can’t even get actual drugs for the actual cause, because of course he can’t. Life is agony. He’s not allowed visitors for what feels like an eternity, and he’s half-unsure that anybody wants to see him, anyway.

Finally, finally, he’s deemed low-risk enough to meet with people from the outside again. And on the very first day, the nurse tells him there’s a Dick Grayson for him, and Roy ignores the way it still stings. “I don’t want to see him,” he says, which isn’t true. He wants to see Dick, but Dick as he had been when Roy had made so many tall promises he should have known he wouldn’t be able to keep. Dick laughing at his shitty jokes. Dick looking at him with that love-light in his eyes. Not Dick in the wake of disaster. Dick who would sign him away to this god-awful prison because Roy fucking put him in that position, fucking ruined his life along with his own.

The nurse returns a moment later, shrugging. “Says he wants to wait. No law against that.”

“Fine, then. Let him wait,” Roy mutters, weary. The three-hour slot passes, and he can breathe again. But at the same time the next day, the nurse says again, “Dick Grayson for Harper.”

And again, the day after. And again, and again, and again.

“Look, clearly this kid cares about you, just go out and say hello,” one of the other patients urges. “Man, you’re lucky someone even showed up for you. Look at me. I got nobody.”

Roy isn’t even sure it’s bitterness that keeps him away anymore. It feels a lot closer to shame. “I can’t.”

“Tch. Whatever, it’s your life.”

Roy’s case had been so severe he’d been booked for a ninety-day program, at the end of which they reviewed him and made him stay thirty more— and Dick shows up without fail for _half of that_. If Roy could have had visitors earlier, he realises Dick would have probably been there the whole time.

The guilt of it finally pushes him to stand up when he hears Dick’s name, the day before he gets discharged. As soon as he sees Dick sitting at that table on the lawn, he freezes. Dick looks like he hasn’t been sleeping, shadows under his eyes, a drawn quality to that still breath-taking face. He looks miserable. Roy can’t move. He rushes back inside, behind the door, where he can see Dick but Dick can’t see him. Even as the minutes march relentlessly on, Dick doesn’t budge. Roy can feel his throat swelling as he eyes the time. He paces between his dorm and the front lawn in a restless daze, just to see if…

“Visiting hours are over, Mr. Grayson,” someone comes to tell him. He had. He’d really waited all three hours.

He looks up, eyes imploring. “Please can I wait just a little bit longer? I know he’s leaving tomorrow, I just want to say goodbye.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Grayson. Maybe you should meet up afterwards.”

“That’s the thing, I can’t guarantee that he’ll want to see me afterwards. Look, I’m his husband, check your records if you don’t believe me. We had a falling out and— please, ma’am. Please. I need to.”

She takes pity on him, says, “I’ll ask him again.” When she goes, Dick actually looks relieved. God. He doesn’t deserve this. It’s that thought alone that pushes Roy forward.

“You just sit there?” His voice is hoarse from underuse, and Dick startles. “Not even a book or something, to occupy you with? You could study.”

Dick’s wide eyes start to glisten, and he smiles obligingly. “I dropped out, actually. No point. I was failing all my classes. Guess work _and_ Robin _and_ college was a bit much, even for me.”

It’s like something’s physically squeezing Roy’s heart. “That’s my fault, isn’t it. Because of me…”

“No, my tr— no, Roy. Don’t blame yourself. I know how the brain functions under heroin abuse, I know about the mood changes, and worse, even. I couldn’t possibly take any of it to heart.”

“Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt, does it.”

“I share some of the blame. I do.” Dick stands, stepping closer. “The signs were all there, I just kept ignoring— and I guess some part of me was, was kind of living vicariously through you. I’d been so sheltered, your life seemed…”

“Fun?” Roy scoffs. “It was, Dick. That’s the danger.”

“I’m sorry I said what I said at Dinah’s place. I— I felt backed into a corner. I couldn’t see any other option. It was wrong, and I’ll never forgive myself. Tell me this helped, tell me they treated you okay…”

Even now, even _now_ Dick wants to take responsibility. Roy swallows, stares at his feet. “You ever hear the story of Eros and Psyche?”

“What? Roy—”

“Eros and Psyche,” Roy insists. “You know, girl so beautiful she catches the attention of a god. He takes her for his bride, but she’s been told she’s marrying a monster, so he hides her away in this cave so dark she can never see his actual face. She loves him anyway, for a while, despite being under the impression he’s some freak. But curiosity gets the better of her one day, and— she lights a candle while he’s sleeping. And for the first time, she sees him for what he is. It sends her into a kind of delirium. She stabs him with his own arrow.”

When he looks, Dick’s eyes are full of sorrow. “I know the story, Roy. It wasn’t… out of disgust, or fear. She’d just— she’d been expecting a monster, but all she saw was love itself. She went mad with how much _more_ — how much _more_ she loved him then. As he was. He was beautiful.”

Roy can’t breathe.

“Psyche was punished for her reaction. She went through trial after trial to prove her love for her husband. She was pregnant and she still endured beatings and torture and, and when it got so hard she wanted to drown herself, she kept on. Until he— until he took her back.”

“She shouldn’t have had to. There was nothing to forgive.”

“Even so. It proved how far she was willing to go for her love of him.”

“He didn’t deserve her.”

“Too bad. You didn’t pick a tragedy.”

“I’m going to make things right, Dick.” Roy can feel his eyes stinging. “For whatever my promises are worth, now. And I’m going to start by— by keeping my distance. Give you time to pick up the pieces. Don’t say no – I hurt you. Excuses aside, I did. And neither of us are going to be able to start over by pretending that I didn’t.”

Dick’s crying, but he’s not stupid. Roy knows he understands. As they are, the resentment for all that had happened would just build, and you can’t heal wounds you inflicted. “I’ll miss you,” he says, regardless.

“You’ll have me. You always will.” Roy means it from the bottom of his heart. “Even when you find someone else.”

“You know you don’t owe it to me to promise something like that.”

“I owe you so much more, but that’s not the point.” Roy shakes his head. “For _my_ love of you, Dick. I’ve been shit at showing it – I guess Ollie and I do have a lot in common ‒ but it’s true.”

Dick throws his arms around him, hitched breaths making him tremble. “You’ll always, always be special to me…”

“And if that’s all I’ll ever be, it’s still a goddamn privilege, my angel.” Roy squeezes him tight, blinking away his own tears. “Thank you for everything.”

Life, oblivious to broken hearts, goes on. Roy joins the CBI. Meets Jade. Has Lian. He skirts the periphery of Dick’s life on his new team of Titans, but keeps his promise and never steps closer, watching over them from as great a distance as he can. Dick has Kory, now, and he’s Nightwing, and Roy’s happy that he’s happy.

Between raising a child and fighting new threats and leading new teams and all the rest, the rings lie forgotten. They don’t have the time to formalise their separation. That’s what they both tell themselves, whenever they remember. They don’t have the time.

How do you start a difficult conversation?

* * *

“So— so Kennie is going to be my mom now?” Lian worried at her bottom lip as if to hold back tears. “Does that mean I won’t get to see Mommy anymore?”

“Sweetheart, of course it doesn’t,” Roy rushed to assure her, kneeling to meet her eyes. “Just because we’re getting married doesn’t mean she’s going to take Mommy’s place, okay?”

“But she’s going to be my stepmom.”

“Well… yeah.”

“Stepmoms are evil.”

Roy laughed in spite of himself. “Aw, Lian. Only in the stories. You didn’t think Uncle Dick was evil, did you?”

“That’s different.”

“Not really. That’s kind of the definition of a step-parent, little dude.”

“Uncle Dick is a boy!”

“Ooh. Don’t say that in front of Grandpa or he’s going to do the thing where he doesn’t shut up for a long, long time.”

The joke didn’t seem to be helping, Lian still looking upset as she clenched and unclenched her fists around the duvet she was sitting on, and Roy sighed, vaguely guilty. “Things won’t change all that much, princess. You’ll see. And if you still feel like maybe you and Kendra don’t get along, after, you just tell me and I’ll break things off with her. Promise.”

“Really?”

“Really, really. You’re the number one lady in my heart.” Roy tackled her onto the bed, earning a grudging laugh. “No one’s more important.”

“Not even Grandpa?”

“Not even Grandpa.”

“Not even Uncle Dick?”

Roy gave her an exaggerated, wide-eyed look and a gasp that made her giggle. “Not even Uncle Dick!”

“Okay.” Her laughs gave way to a little yawn. “You can marry her.”

“I like how this is about getting your permission, now.” Roy snorted. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Sleep tight, baby. Try not to dream about world domination _too_ often.”

“You’re silly, Daddy.”

“No, you.”

He pulled the covers up around her, and patted her gently on the back in a slow rhythm until he was sure she was asleep. The smile he always braved for her had long melted away, and it was tempting to just give in to the exhaustion himself, let tomorrow deal with its own problems. Sighing, he forced himself up – no rest for the wicked. Kendra was waiting for him, downstairs, that smile of hers that never quite reached her eyes already in place. He steeled himself. No turning back now.

“Is she asleep?”

Roy smiled back tightly. “Like a rock.”

“How’d she take the news?”

“Pretty well, actually.” Roy gave her lips a quick peck. “I think it helped to have you over for dinner. Why didn’t we do that more often?”

“We have the whole rest of our lives to catch up,” Kendra reasoned. “Did you make it clear to her that I won’t force her to call me Mom or anything like that if she doesn’t want to?”

That made Roy’s smile more genuine. For all of her faults, it could never be said that Kendra didn’t care about Lian, at least. “Don’t worry. She’s used to a non-nuclear family setup. It’s always been that way with us.”

“Yeah, it does seem weirdly like you have three parents.”

“Oh, that? That’s even weirder than you think, actually. Dinah and I don’t have that much of an age difference, so she’s always been more like an older sister figure than a mom. Despite being married to Ollie. Meanwhile Hal’s always been around ever since I was a kid.”

Kendra’s nose scrunched up. “That is weird.”

Defensive all of a sudden, Roy shrugged. “Different strokes. I grew up happy.”

“If you say so. See you at the Watchtower tomorrow?”

“Don’t you want to stay the night?”

“Another time,” she promised, pulling her coat on before Roy could even offer to hold it for her. She gave him a brisk, mechanical kiss, and turned for the door without even asking him to walk her to her car. No time for chivalry and high romance, apparently. Roy sighed, reaching out to at least hold the door open. “Okay, well. Have a good night.”

“You too, Roy.”

Ollie was coming up the driveway as Kendra was leaving, and Roy watched them exchange an awkward hello. “First time I’ve seen her at yours,” Ollie noted as soon as he got close enough.

“Not the last, though. We, uh, decided we’re going to go through with it.”

Ollie’s eyebrows shot up so high they disappeared into his hairline. “You’re getting married?”

“Yeah, um… it seemed like the right decision to make.”

“You didn’t knock her up, did you?”

“Ollie!”

“Just checking.” Ollie held up two placating hands. “Hey, so long as you’re happy. You know if you ever need advice…”

“I’ll definitely not be turning to the guy in a complicated three-way where the people involved don’t like to acknowledge it out loud, thanks.”

“That’s… fair.” Ollie exhaled, sheepish.

They stood there on the porch in amiable silence, for a while, one of the perks of Roy having moved in across from his family. “You mad about earlier?” Roy ventured, in time.

“Nah. You know you got an eternal free pass to do whatever the hell you want after the way I treated you, son.”

“Dead horse, Ollie.”

“Not to me, nor should it be.” Ollie rested his weight on his arms on the wooden railing. “I’m worried, though. You’re so devoted to him, Roy, I don’t get it.”

“Yes, you do.” Roy huffed out an amused breath, thinking of how Ollie had stepped up for a team he didn’t even want to be on. “You mean you don’t approve. That’s different.”

“Yeah, well, he walked out on you. I still remember how devastated Lian was.”

Roy closed his eyes against the memory. “It’s not like that, anyway. I’m engaged now.”

“I just hope this won’t turn out to be a better-the-devil-you-know situation.” Ollie sighed as he shook his head.

Time to change the subject, Roy decided. “Could you tell Hal and Dinah that… even if I’m staying on with the JLA, I can do backup if you guys need me?”

“Sure. Goes both ways. I’m willing to give Dick credit where it’s due, he’s not Bruce. He won’t turn this into some pissing contest.”

“You got any leads on the murder thing, yet?”

“None. Palmer still wants to start with Gotham. Hal in Bruce’s territory while he isn’t able to do anything about it, that’s going to be fun.” In a sarcastic drawl. “Don’t tell your boyfriend until you absolutely have to, okay?”

“Woo. I won’t, I don’t want World War III either.”

“Smart kid.” Ollie chuckled. “Alright, I’ll leave you to it. Sleep well.”

“You too, Dad.”

He watched Ollie leave, then stayed on a while longer, watching the lights in the house opposite turn off one by one, until only Mia’s room was still intact. She liked to read before bed. The sight was comforting, somehow, and Roy felt a lot lighter in his heart as he turned and stepped inside.

* * *

It sounded brutal even before Roy stepped into the Hall. Dick’s voice was saying, “You’re really leaving the team? Both of you?” and then he could hear Diana, tone reluctant, “My obligations to Themyscira outweigh my own wishes. I will return if I can.”

Clark sounded a lot more regretful, and no wonder, Dick had always been his favourite. “And I’ll be on New Krypton most of the time, but I’ll be on call whenever I’m on Earth. I promise.”

Roy hung back so as not to intrude, until he could hear their footsteps leaving. When he entered at last, he found Dick sitting on the roundtable, legs swinging absently, and a stormy look on his face. “First day on the job, I’m really killing it, huh,” Dick said, sarcastic, without even turning around. “Literally.”

“I see you still think you’re to blame for the entire world’s problems,” Roy answered with a sympathetic smile. “It’s nothing to do with you, Dick. People voted to split, that destabilises the entire operation. The big players probably see no point in this anymore.”

“And Bruce thought I was ready. I should have been able to hold the team together in the first place.”

“Please. No one can out-stubborn Hal. Not even Ollie can out-stubborn Hal, and Ollie can out-stubborn _everyone_. You think it’d have been any different if Bruce had been here instead of you?”

“I just feel like I’m letting him down.” Dick ran a hand across his face. “It’s like every time I turn around, there’s another reminder that I’m not Bruce.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Roy.”

“You want me on your team, you deal with brutal truths about dear old Bat-in-law.” Roy handed Dick a mug of coffee, which he accepted, grateful. “Don’t spiral, okay? Breathe. Talk it through, I’m listening.”

“Well… of the usual line-up, Clark and Diana left, Bruce is stuck in a wheelchair, Ollie, Hal, and Dinah want to go off on their own, Martian Manhunter died, no one’s heard anything from Atlantis since the last crisis, and our dear Mr. Current Flash _turned me down_ , I asked him _twice_.”

Roy whistled. “Wals must _really_ be swamped, to say no to you.”

“So that’s everyone that’s supposed to be on the JLA, no matter the iteration. Besides them? Of the heroes who didn’t join the new team and aren’t either off-world or out of commission, I got in a call to Red Tornado but haven’t heard anything back, Black Lightning’s taking over the Outsiders as a favour to Bruce – and he could have taken over Firestorm’s training so we’d have _him_ as a full-timer at last, meaning there’s that thrown out the window, too.”

“Who _do_ we still have?”

“Doctor Light – as in, Kimiyo Hoshi – Hawkgirl, John Stewart, Vixen, Zatanna. You and me.”

“Geez. Justice League Detroit could probably kick our asses at the minute.”

“Oh, and we’re not even sure about John, by the way. I heard that Kimiyo remarked about Hal splitting and he got pretty defensive.”

“I’m telling you though, the real problem is Hal was _right_. Clark and Diana and Bruce fucked up and we _are_ kind of sitting around doing nothing just because there isn’t a large-scale threat right now. To top it off, it all got aired so publically. It’s bad optics. Even if you wanted to run a membership drive, which you don’t, no one will want in no matter how much you turn up that classic Grayson charm.”

“Yeah, I did give it some thought. Your help could be invaluable there, Red.”

“Help is what I’m here for,” Roy assured him. “What do you need?”

“Be my bridge between the JLA and the Rogue team,” Dick implored. “What do they want us to do better, exactly? I can start there. It’s what I’m good at, allegedly. Diplomacy, right?”

“Well…” Roy filled him in on the Mike Dante situation, careful to leave out the detail that the others were going to be in Gotham. “I don’t know, I agree. It sounds like a case worth looking into.”

Dick nodded slowly. “We can. We can, but I would need a team on board with _helping_. Not— the ones loyal to Bruce. I hate to admit it, but he’d never approve.”

“I guarantee Mari’s your girl. Probably Kendra, too. You did just rule out Zatanna and Doctor Light, though, boss.”

“Shit. It’s not enough, I need my own people, I need—”

“The Titans?” Roy finished for him with a knowing little smile. Dick’s cheeks turned pinkish, but he didn’t disagree.

“It’s like I said, though, Wally can’t, Garth’s gone radio silent…”

Roy had already fished out his phone and dialled the familiar digits.

“Who—”

“Hey, angel. I’m good, you? Listen – would you be interested in joining the JLA? No, I thought so, but how about if it’s to stop a certain birdie of ours from taking on too much, as usual?”

Before Dick could get a word out, Roy put his phone on speaker. Donna’s voice chimed, “ _What did you get yourself into, Dick?_ ”

Dick shook his head, sending Roy an exasperated smile, but he obliged. “Don… sorry I haven’t been in touch. Things have been. A lot. Could really use some help, here.”

“ _Is that Dick?_ ” another voice filtered through the phone, “— _Did he say he needs help? Dick, honey, it’s Kory._ ”

“Ooh. Two for the price of one.” Roy beamed. “Hey, Kory. Long story short, Boss-man here just got foisted with the entire League by Bruce.”

“ _We’ll be there,_ ” Kory said in a tone that left no room for argument. By the time they exchanged pleasantries, promises, and hung up, Dick looked a lot calmer.

“Okay. Okay, this could work.”

“You, me, team full of women… nostalgic, huh.” Roy smiled.

“God, I was freaking out. Ever since Bruce went down, Jason and Tim have been driving me up the _wall_ fighting over who gets to handle Gotham instead, and I have Damian – uh, Bruce’s son, long story, though he might as well be mine, to tell you the truth – he needs somebody looking out for him, and Tim’s jealous that I’m giving him the attention at all, and then _this_.” Dick sighed, then smiled, sheepish. “Thank you, Roy. You’re like some guardian angel of mine, always swooping in whenever I feel like I’m drowning.”

Roy’s heart sank at that, and he suddenly felt a lot less chirpy. “Hey, Robbie? There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

Oblivious, Dick cocked his head to one side, looking for all the world like an actual, curious bird. “What’s up?”

“Remember how I told you I’ve, um, been seeing Kendra?”

Dick’s eyes grew wide, and he hopped off the table, stepping closer to Roy. “I wasn’t overstepping any boundaries, was I? I only meant—”

“No, no, that’s not it. I, uh…” Roy turned away. “She proposed. I said yes.”

Silence, for the span of a heartbeat. When Roy looked, Dick was giving him a smile that seemed a little faltering. “O-Oh. That’s… wow. Congratulations. I’m so happy for you.”

“Yeah… the thing is, I can’t actually marry her while I’m. Still married to you. So.”

Dick shook his head as if to get rid of the very idea. “No, of course. Of course not. We’ve been meaning to anyway, we just—”

“Right, we didn’t have the time—”

They nodded at each other, heads just bobbing up and down, awkward.

“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry,” Dick said, at last. “Considering I wasn’t actually legal as of transitioning, I’m sure we can file for an annulment on those grounds, not just divorce. It’ll be like it never even happened.”

Like it never even happened… Roy smiled tightly. “Yeah.”

There wasn’t really anything else to be said, but it felt like it. He didn’t want to go. For his part, Dick’s eyes kept flitting toward the ground, and he was worrying at his lip in a nervous gesture.

“Does she—” he hesitated— “Does she make you happier than I did?”

Roy’s head jerked up. Dick wouldn’t look at him. His arms were wrapped around himself, like he wanted comforting. Unable to bear it, Roy rushed forward and pulled him into a fierce hug, and he told himself Dick was only shaking from how tight it was. He could feel Dick’s lips against his neck, more from the position than on purpose, but he savoured it for as long as he could before he had to step away, a plastic smile at the ready.

“Come to the wedding, okay?”

“Of course I will,” Dick assured him, bittersweet. “I’m glad you’re moving on, Roy.”

“In another life…”

“One where I’m not so broken I’m all sharp edges that you keep hurting yourself on.” Dick smiled, rueful, clasping both his hands in his and pressing a kiss to them. “It is what it is, my love.”

 _You know I never asked you to go_. Roy pulled his hands away, and he cleared his throat. “Okay, well… I should probably go… see about those temporary passes so Donna and Kory can use the teleporters.”

“Goodbye,” Dick agreed, and Roy wished it didn’t have to sound so final.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **ETA 29/12/20:** You guys, the [interlude](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T55cHoTLhiw) on the new MGK album is so perfect for this chapter OMFG. Go listen and weep.


	4. Interlude

The problem of Kendra Saunders was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Anyone with half a brain could tell that she was not, in fact, in love with Roy Harper. And while dating him could be explained by a desire to shirk the chokehold that Fate had on her, forcing her to live and love like a woman she couldn’t remember having once been, _marrying_ him was a lot harder to understand. Jefferson Pierce, Black Lightning and the only person on the team who had some form of camaraderie with Kendra outside of uniform, said as much when he found out.

“It’s marriage, Jeff, not a death sentence,” Kendra had reasoned, strangely blasé. “If it doesn’t work out, we’ll get a divorce. So what?”

That of course begged the question of why she would bother in the first place, then. But the only people who were asking it were the ones who did, in fact, love Roy Harper to pieces. People like Oliver Queen, for whom Roy Harper was special among his three children, in that he’d raised Roy to adulthood in a way that he hadn’t had a chance to with Connor or Mia. Roy would always be _his boy_ , and God help anyone who tried to use his boy.

Or Lian Harper, who didn’t trust anybody but herself to make Daddy happy. Because sometimes Daddy got very, very sad, like when Uncle Dick stopped coming over, when they were still living in New York. And whenever Daddy got very sad, he wouldn’t cry like Lian does, he’d just get too sick to eat or get out of bed, and then he’d send Lian to Grandpa’s until he feels better. So she had to make sure no one ever hurt Daddy that bad again.

Or Mari McCabe, to whom Roy Harper was, as far as she was concerned, her new best friend. They’d hit it off at the very get-go, bonding over how similar his childhood on the reservation had been to hers in Zambesi, how his gods were as fickle as her gods. And he’d turned out to be hilarious, and kind, and always willing to give her the benefit of his experience on the field without making her feel inferior. The two of them being the youngest full-time members of the current JLA, she was worried specifically about how little _fun_ he seemed to be having with his fiancée.

Or Donna Troy, who would always hold a special place in her heart for her first love, and who knew Roy Harper so well, all her mental alarm bells went off at the news of his engagement.

Or Dick Grayson, to whom Roy Harper, _son coeur_ , _son amour_ , _son trésor_ , was just… too much. Too much.

The problem of Kendra Saunders, then, could only be solved through the interest of at least one of them. It happened like this:

After a heart-warming reunion between old friends, and after a considerably more serious mission briefing, Roy had suggested they all go back to his for dinner and to catch up. Dick had been, if not eager, at least curious to get to know his husband’s fiancée (a string of words it would take some time to get used to), but Kendra then ended up turning Roy down. Which was surprising considering they were supposed to be engaged, but doubly so when both Mari and Roy said this was pretty typical.

“Kendra doesn’t do bonding,” Mari supplied, somewhat sheepish. “One time Dinah and I invited her out for a Girl’s Night, and you’d think we said we were going to go burn babies.”

“That has got to make planning for the bachelorette party a nightmare,” Donna remarked, equal parts stumped and sympathetic.

“Aw, hell. I hadn’t even thought about that…”

“Is she going to bother with bridesmaids, then?” Kory wondered, because priorities. “That is the most fun of Earthling marriage traditions…”

It became a matter of her absence being so conspicuous, she was the logical topic of conversation. Even when they got to Roy’s, where dinner had evolved into a mini buffet thanks to the rest of his family coming over, all anyone could talk about seemed to be the wedding. Dick, more than a little melancholy at this point, decided he needed a breather, and left the living room under the pretext of getting a drink. He stood staring at the kitchen sink without really seeing it for a while, lost in thought. And then Ollie came up behind him.

“Do you trust her?” Ollie asked, without preamble.

Dick startled. “What?”

“Kendra. Do you trust her?” Ollie placed the dishes he had in his arms into the sink, then leaned against the counter. “’Cause I don’t trust her. But if it’s just me that doesn’t trust her, I’m being a paranoid father. If _you_ don’t trust her, either, though, I could be on to something.”

“I don’t know that I know her well enough to…”

“Yeah, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she’s an upstanding person in the objective sense. It’s just this situation, I don’t know. Something smells funny.”

“Um…”

“For crying out loud, Dick, I won’t bite.”

Miffed, Dick crossed his arms, scowling. “Well, excuse me for being a little confused, when all you usually do when we talk is bitch at me.”

Ollie waved it off, nonchalant. “Sticks and stones. You’ve been through worse. And anyway, you care about Roy, I know that. That’s not why you walked out on him. If it had been, I’d probably be nicer – well, marginally. No, you’re way more dangerous than that, you self-destruct. Roy rushes in to save you, and then he gets caught in the crossfire. Meaning I have no real standing to stop him if I wanted to.” He met Dick’s eyes. “You have my sympathies, Dick, your dad’s an asshole and God knows you’ve been through hell. I’d just prefer you did your imploding far enough from my son that he doesn’t get caught by the debris. Why didn’t you tell him I started funding the Outsiders?”

Thrown off by the abrupt change of subject, Dick could only ask, “What?”

“You’re a detective, and I’m not the best at _sneaking_. You had to have known it was me who took over funding.”

“Well, I…” Dick shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. “I figured you were doing it so Roy wouldn’t feel like he was leaving us in the lurch, if he decided to quit.”

“Right. If he left you.”

“Left the team.”

“Same difference.”

Dick didn’t deny it, feeling hollow as he stared down at his shoes. “You wanted to make it so he could. I… agreed. That he should. So I didn’t tell.”

“Exactly.” Ollie pointed at him. “So that tells me we’re on the same page, at least. To protect Roy, even if it’s from himself. Which is why I’m asking, do you trust her?”

Oh. Satisfied, Dick gave it more serious consideration. “I… can’t say I like the situation, but anyone who knows me like that knows I have a jealous streak, Ollie.”

“And is it? Just jealousy?”

Dick narrowed his eyes, contemplative. Out of the periphery of his vision, he could see Ollie smile to himself, and then start to leave.

“Just a thought. You’re the detective.”

He was right, too. Now that the idea was in his mind, he couldn’t let it go. When he made his way back to the others and Lian came bouncing over to him, he couldn’t help interrupting her eager chatter with a hesitant, “Lian, sweetheart, what do you think about Kendra and Daddy getting married?”

“I thought maybe Daddy would marry you or Auntie Donna,” Lian answered, downcast but honest. “Kennie’s okay, but…”

“It’s alright. You can tell me anything, I promise it’ll be our secret.”

Lian worried at her lip, reluctant. “When she plays with me, it’s not as fun without Daddy. Sometimes she doesn’t even remember my name. She calls me Mia.”

“Oh, I… see.” Dick frowned.

“But that’s okay! Daddy said they’ll break up if I still don’t like her. Because I’m important.” She puffed out her little chest, all smug. “And then he can marry Auntie Donna instead.”

“Not me?” Dick asked, hoping his smile looked more playful than bittersweet.

“No, silly, _I’m_ going to marry you when I grow up!”

“Is that so.” Dick pulled her into a tight hug, her head against his heart, helplessly touched. “Aren’t you mad at me at all, little one?”

“Promise you won’t tell Daddy?”

“Swear on my life.”

“I saw you go away.” Dick froze, but Lian continued. “I couldn’t sleep that night ’cause it was so hot so I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and I saw you. You were crying, Uncle Dick. You didn’t really want to go away, did you?”

He buried his face in her hair, rocking her in silence for a moment. “I had to. I had to, Lian. You’ll understand it someday. You’re a clever little lady.”

“Stealing my girl?” Roy’s voice startled him out of the embrace, and he glanced up to find that trademark rakish grin. “You’ve had nowhere near enough food, come on, come back to the other room.”

“I’m good, Roy, really.” Dick stood as soon as Lian had untangled herself from him and latched on to her own father. “We were just catching up, weren’t we, princess? I’ll be right there.”

Roy looked sceptical, but didn’t argue. “Okay, if you’re sure…”

Dick took a moment or two to make sure Roy had gone well ahead, then felt silly about avoiding him, like they were a middle school couple having an awkward spat. Shaking his head, he made his way back to the living room. Even though Kory, Donna, and Mari still seemed to be discussing Kendra and Roy, Dick took the ottoman next to them, anyway, unsure if he would be welcome with Connor, Roy, and Lian – not on Ollie’s watch. The girls made room, delighted.

“We were just saying that it’s pretty wild, how I might be the only new friend Roy has made since you guys,” Mari supplied, grinning. “I could be the only one in this circle who hasn’t known Roy since for-fucking-ever.”

“I wanted Mari’s opinion on the situation, you know, being a fresh perspective and all.” Donna squinted. “Don’t you think it all feels a little bit… off, too, Dick?”

“In what sense?”

“I mean, on Roy’s end, it tracks, right? Like, he’s always been bad at saying no to people he cares about. Of course he’d be stupidly loyal enough to marry someone he’s not in love with, if she asked nicely. But Kendra? What does she get out of this if she’s not even that into him?”

“We don’t know that she isn’t,” Dick answered, half-hearted. “What’s not to love about Roy? He’s… an adventure. He has such a big heart. And he’s attractive—”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s built like a brickhouse and those _gorgeous_ cat’s-eye green eyes and that _devilish_ smile,” Donna teased, tapping him playfully. “It’s not about desirability, no one on this galaxy would deny that our Speedy isn’t exactly getting left on the shelf. But Kendra isn’t leaving me with the impression that she’s invested enough to want to marry him when she won’t even show up for dinner with his best friends, you know?”

“Speaking as someone who’s had a lot more to go on than you guys have, Donna’s right,” Mari spoke up. “I’m friendly with Kendra, she confides in me a little. Not about Roy, but about Carter, sometimes. I thought for sure she was warming up to the idea of him being her soulmate after he got hurt in the last crisis. Why propose to Roy now?”

“Maybe she and Carter fought, and this is revenge?” Donna suggested.

Mari shook her head. “She’s not the petty type. Kendra’s mind runs in straight lines, trust me, she has zero capacity for subterfuge. That’s, like, the one thing she and Roy have in common.”

“I don’t know.” Kory frowned. “Shouldn’t we give Roy more credit than this? Surely he would be able to tell if she was just… using him, somehow?”

Dick averted his eyes. “You’re wrong there, Kor. I’ve known him… half my life so far. Like I said, he has such a big heart. He’s always ready to believe the best of people, no matter how…” His voice faltered, and he let the sentence fade away. The memories came flooding in despite his attempts to evade them, and he cleared his throat, standing up. “Sorry, it’s kind of warm in here, don’t you think? I’m going out on the porch for a sec.”

He could hear Kory’s hesitant voice, behind him, “Was it something I said?” But he ignored it. Roy sent him a questioning look, too, when he passed, and Dick answered with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. He stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind him. It was a clear night, the stars a dizzying map above him that earned the city its name. Sighing, he stood at the wooden railing, leaning his head against the post. Too much was happening at once, and he needed to quiet his mind.

“Dick?”

He turned. Kory had followed him outside, it seemed, her hand still on the doorknob, as if unsure if she was welcome. He gave her a soft smile, which she took as her answer. Closing the door again, she stepped up to his side, her frown concerned. “What’s the expression – a penny for your thoughts?”

“That’s the one.”

“You haven’t looked happy once since the evening started.”

“I’m just tired.” It wasn’t a complete lie. “I have a lot on my plate right now.”

“I don’t believe you.” Kory ran a gentle hand over his, and he couldn’t help himself, he let her take it in hers and squeeze. “Your face looks exactly like it did when I told you of my engagement to Prince Karras.”

She was warm as sunlight, and Dick leaned into her shoulder, swallowing hard. “Am I that obvious?”

“No. I just know you.” Kory smiled, tender. “That tattoo of yours… were you telling me the truth when you said it stands for Robin Hood?”

“I _am_ a fan. You know that.”

“Not so extreme a fan as to get a tattoo, I don’t think. Perhaps Green Arrow would.”

That made him laugh in spite of himself, and Kory’s smile grew like she’d won a difficult battle. “There really is something between you and Roy, isn’t there? And I told Grace she was imagining things…”

“It’s in the past, Kor. We… we didn’t work out.”

“Will you tell me what happened?”

He was about to make the usual excuses, but she leaned down, so he had no choice but to meet her eyes, see the genuine care in them. And it was like he was back to being twenty-one, being taught how to open up his heart again after all the hurt by this overwhelming woman who just radiated love. “I’m sure you guessed enough.”

“Oh, I know Roy started the Outsiders as a pretext so he could take care of you after we lost Donna and— everything else that’d happened to you back then. Moving cities to be nearer to you is much too significant a gesture to come from somebody who’s nothing beyond a friend.” Kory’s smile was kind. “It’s more… what went wrong, that I don’t understand.”

Dick stared at the street across from them, feeling vacant. “Do you remember that night, when you… had to come take over leadership?”

“You mean when you boys beat the _sola_ out of each other? You broke up over that?”

“No, not quite, it’s— God, not to sound cliché, but it’s complicated.” Dick exhaled, overwhelmed. “Taking care of me – as you put it – it’s thankless work, starlight. I— the things I went through, they left their scars. Roy, he had gone out of his way to make sure that I was never alone, that I had someone to turn to for succour and romance and all of it, and all I gave him was— I don’t even know. I don’t know why he stayed. I could barely stomach being touched, back then. I wasn’t a parental figure to Lian, I was more like another dependant he had to look after. And I kept taking things out on him, too, just because he was _there_ , and— then it all culminated on that night. I hurt him.”

Kory shook her head. “I still don’t understand. I remember you two speaking to each other after that like nothing was wrong. I thought you had reconciled.”

“It wasn’t that. I’m not that good a person. It was after. I heard him talking to you, on the rooftop. Remember? Remember how he still— came to my defence, like the team didn’t _need_ you to replace me as leader? Just moments ago, we had _drawn blood_ , Kory. Isn’t that terrifying? Who can love someone to that extent?”

“Oh, honey…”

“And then the thing with Indigo. When Roy had to figure out who the mole among us was. His interrogation methods, Kory, those weren’t _him_. Those were straight out of my playbook. You told me he pulled a torture device on you from when you were on the slave-ship, that’s— Roy isn’t supposed to be like that, being with the Outsiders was ruining him. And he only formed the stupid team because of me.”

“You left him?”

Dick closed his eyes. “I had to. I had to stop being the reason he kept— I was so broken, and Roy loved me whole again. But at what cost?”

“Shouldn’t he deserve a say in that decision?”

“Like I said. I’m not that good a person.” Dick laughed, bitter. “He belongs in the light. On the JLA. I won’t pull him down to my level. Not Roy. Not ever.”

“Why are you always so hard on yourself, Dick?” Kory wrapped an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. “I wish you could see yourself the way the rest of us—”

“Anyway. It’s in the past.” Dick stepped back, cutting her off with a forced smile. “He’s doing better without me. I’m just… stupid, reacting like this, he deserves to be happy with Kendra.”

“I’m sure he would have understood if you told him that—”

“Exactly.” Dick exhaled a breath that was simultaneously amused and self-deprecating. “He’d forgive me, Kor. And I was so frightened that he would.”

As if his saints had taken pity on him, the door behind them opened, interrupting Kory before she could reply. Mia stepped out, humming to herself. But then she saw them, and froze. “Sorry!” she squawked, rushing back inside. Dick and Kory chuckled.

“You know, Speedy seems like she’d be rather plucky, but she can get pretty shy sometimes, too, huh,” Kory observed.

Dick smiled. “Only around people she doesn’t know that well. Once you break the ice, you’ll be paying her to shut up.”

And that was when he realised what he’d said. Dick frowned, the wheels in his mind starting to turn. “Something wrong?” Kory asked, picking up on it.

“Only a hunch…” Dick tapped a finger against the railing, restless. “Um, I think I might head back in and say my goodbyes now. I need to swing by the Watchtower real quick.”

That night saw three separate sleepless figures. Dick Grayson, frowning in concentration as he sifted through first the files in the Watchtower, and then more on the Bat-computer. Roy Harper, cleaning up after the evening, mulling over Dick’s reaction to the news of his engagement. And Kendra Saunders, rejecting yet one more call from Carter since she had popped the question, a look that could only be described as _vulnerable_ on her face as she stared at his name on her screen. At last, he stopped trying, and she exhaled. Forced herself to close her eyes and rest.

When the morning came, she was the first at the Hall of Justice as usual. Without Jeff on the team, she didn’t have the pretext of taking the first shift on surveillance, but so few of them were left that she hadn’t thought anyone would be there when she arrived. The Hall was her sanctum from this whole mess of a situation for the time being, and she didn’t know where else she’d be able to avoid Carter quite so easily. She hoped they would get started on the new mission soon. She needed to be distracted.

It was a surprise to find someone else there already. Nightwing – because even if he was unmasked, there was no mistaking his almost dancer-like build, dark wavy hair, pecan-coloured skin – Nightwing was nursing a cup of coffee at the roundtable, nonchalant. She froze, mostly because she hadn’t sensed him, and finding him in the room legitimately took her by surprise. When he, all of twenty-something, had walked into the meeting the other day and declared himself a new team leader, she hadn’t known what to make of it. Sure, he’d been trained by Batman, and she couldn’t deny that his reputation preceded him. But the Justice League was another level.

He didn’t look tough, either. He wasn’t built like Roy – his frame all lean muscle instead. At least a head shorter than her fiancé, too. And now that she could see his eyes, it struck her, what an androgynous beauty he was. If she had met him like this for the first time, she wouldn’t have even been able to tell what his gender was until he started talking, let alone guessed that he was a vigilante – or any kind of fighter at all. He glanced up, and sent her a smile, which didn’t help his case. He looked angelic.

“Good morning,” he said. Even his voice was nothing like the commanding resonance she’d heard from him at the meeting, it was soft and polite.

“Morning,” Kendra repeated, unsure. She’d heard the stories, of course. One of the nicest guys in the business, blah, blah, blah. She would never underestimate someone Bruce trained, but for a first impression, this really did make her wonder how she could take orders from him. “You’re here early, Nightwing,” was all she could think to say, a little confused.

“Please, call me Dick. Dick Grayson.” His smile never faltered. “Roy and I have known each other forever. That makes you and me practically family.”

Right, Kendra remembered being told about the five founding Titans, how close they all were. “I appreciate that you’d trust me with your secret identity,” she said, to be polite.

“No secrets among family, right?”

The way he phrased it made her heart hammer, but he was still smiling at her, all friendly. She cleared her throat. “Of course.”

“Then you should also know that Roy and I used to date, once upon a time.”

That did surprise her. He didn’t seem to be joking, and she couldn’t help admitting, “I didn’t think he was into men.”

“You don’t know your own fiancé is bisexual?”

Oh. So that was his game. Kendra scoffed. “Is this an interrogation? I already did this with Black Canary. Look, I’m not out to hurt him, alright? Would all of you stop acting like he isn’t a grown man who can make his own choices?”

But he still looked benign. “Roy means a lot to me. I wouldn’t want us to be enemies, Kendra.”

She shrugged. “If I can help it, I’d rather not, either.”

“Let me rephrase.” Dick set his cup down, and met her eyes. Something about his whole demeanour changed, then, and she tensed. His eyes – bright blue and piercing – the look in them made her think of the one Ollie sometimes got, just when you’d bought into the fact that he seemed cocky and loudmouthed and you made the mistake of underestimating him because of it. The one that cautioned, loud and clear, _Try me_. _I dare you_. “You don’t want me for an enemy.”

“What is this about?” she demanded.

“People don’t tend to slip up on the _first_ syllable when mistaking a word or another person’s name, you know. If you truly couldn’t remember Lian’s, your go-to would likely be _Leah_ , or _Leonne_ , or something along those lines. It wouldn’t be _Mia_.”

Kendra’s heart stopped.

“When Lian first told me, I had my doubts, but then I thought you might have gotten her and Roy’s sister mixed up. But why would you? Mia’s shy around people she doesn’t know. You two are not likely to be more than acquaintances.”

“I don’t understand what—”

Dick placed a photograph of a smiling teenage girl in front of them, and Kendra had to use every ounce of her restraint not to leap across the table and fucking _deck_ him. “Mia Goyers-Johnson. Aged eighteen, going on nineteen this year. Lives with her parents in Eugene, Oregon. Her _adoptive_ parents.”

“You bastard. You _sick_ son of a—”

“Given up for adoption as a baby by her sixteen-year-old biological mother… one Kendra Saunders.”

She was half out of her seat in pure anger when Dick cut in, “The first attack will trigger the lockdown mechanism and trap the both of us in here, Kendra. I didn’t underestimate you, so please don’t underestimate me.”

The sudden coldness in his expression told her that this wasn’t an empty threat – gone was Mr. Nice Guy, this was the real Dick Grayson. Seething, she sat back down. “You do _not_ get to judge me until you’ve had a child of your own.”

“I’m not judging you. You gave her up because you were too young to take on the responsibility of motherhood. Then you died and became Hawkgirl. We’re in the realm of speculation now, but Shiera’s memories are returning, aren’t they? Carter triggers them, doesn’t he? Especially now that you’re starting to care about him more, ever since the last crisis. You’re afraid of ceasing to be— Kendra. Of forgetting that your daughter is your daughter.” She couldn’t school her expression in time, and Dick latched onto that, without hesitation. “Here’s why I think you really want to marry Roy. You want a solid reason to make Carter stay out of your life for good – and what better reason than an actual contract to stay faithful to somebody else?”

“It _is_ speculation,” Kendra challenged. “Maybe I just want to marry Roy. Maybe Mia has nothing to do with it.”

“Then why hide her existence from him?”

She opened and closed her mouth, unable to think as quickly as he seemed to be, to find an excuse. He smiled at that, absent. “So he really doesn’t know.”

“You bluffed!”

“You choked.” Dick shrugged. “No one buys that you ‘just want to marry him’, Kendra. Except maybe him, because he’s simply that generous. Which you know fully well, and that’s why you’re taking advantage of it.”

“And? You’re going to tell Roy now? All this because— because what, you’re jealous?”

“I’m not telling anyone.” Dick made an almost nonchalant gesture with his hand. “But you’ll know that I know. And you’ll remember it, going forward.” His gaze turned dangerous. “So love Roy. I don’t care if you two are playing pretend. Hurt him in any capacity, and this _will_ come out. That’s not a threat. It’s a promise.”

“Heart of the team, my ass! What kind of person uses somebody’s _child_ against them?”

Dick laughed under his breath, though it didn’t sound amused. “I don’t know why everyone insists on holding me to presumptions _you_ make about my character, and then get so offended when I contradict them.”

“It’s like Batman never even left,” Kendra spat. Then she stormed out of the room, her mind in utter chaos.


	5. Third Movement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Canon Divergence Notes I Left Out From the First Note Because Sometimes Plans Change in the Actual Writing Whoops
> 
> → I misremembered how Ollie taking over funding for the Outsiders went down, my bad. Let’s just pretend that was 100% intentional and serves the AU-ness of this plot, LMAO.
> 
> → Remember when Prometheus attacked the JLA before CFJ, and then Robinson explained away his OOC-ness in CFJ by saying that was an impostor? Yeah – we’re just going to retcon the first attack out altogether, it makes it a lot less convoluted than an impostor storyline. I’m also reworking parts of his backstory. My city now.
> 
> → I reimagined Anarky. He’s got this whole “We are Legion” thing going on now, because come on, missed opportunity, there…
> 
> → Talking of which, if you haven’t looked up the instances Anarky and GA have worked together before, you should. It’s good shit.
> 
> → Don’t even ask me what’s going on with the Bat-timeline, I can’t be arsed to fact-check when which incident happened on top of how different things would be if Bruce hadn’t died and Battle for the Cowl never happened.
> 
> Your obligatory reminder to always use condoms every-time-including-oral, the boys are being less than responsible in the heat of the moment, here. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Of all the things Roy had expected to see when he got to the Hall, it wasn’t his fiancée standing outside of the cafeteria, smoking. He did a double-take as he stepped out of the tube, but nope – that was definitely Kendra, unmasked, fucking inhaling the cigarette between her fingers. “Wow,” he couldn’t help blurting out, so he went on, “You smoke?”

She seemed vacant, somehow, as she turned and gave him a casual shrug. “Like you never have, knowing you.”

“I’m just surprised. Never seen you smoke before.” Roy frowned. “Didn’t pin you for the type to, either, but you can’t judge a book, huh. I quit for Lian’s sake – well, I have a whole delinquent past behind me, actually.”

“Yeah, well. Mine just caught up to me, so.” Kendra exhaled a silent, humourless laugh.

“Everything okay?”

“Fine. Just peachy.” Kendra scoffed, sarcastic. Concerned, Roy reached out to hold her by the waist, but she twisted out of his grip. “It’s nothing, Roy. Thank you, but— let’s just get to work, I was waiting for you to get here. I didn’t want to go into the briefing alone.”

Roy blinked, confused. “Why not?”

“I don’t like Nightwing,” Kendra said, an accusatory tone in her voice that only perplexed Roy further.

“Uh…” But she was off before he could get an explanation, and he had no choice but to follow after her. The others were already in the meeting room, discussing something in urgent tones. He was surprised by how uncharacteristically close Kendra was sticking to him, and he caught Mari’s gaze as she was also side-eyeing them, curious. She shrugged, and he did too. Weird.

“Perfect timing.” Dick gave him a nod. “Kory, can you fill Roy in, too, please.”

“Right. As I was telling Dick, Donna and I have been lodging at the Bakers’ for a while, and yesterday night, Buddy and Ellen had some visitors.”

Which left room for a million questions about why they’d been lodging at Buddy Baker’s in the first place, but Roy figured now wasn’t the time. “Unusual because?”

“Because one of them was a talking gorilla and the other was blue,” Donna said wryly, then continued in a more serious tone. “Congorilla and Buddy were on the Forgotten Heroes together—”

“The who?”

“Oh, hilarious, Roy.” Donna shook her head, exasperated. “Anyway, he came asking for his old friend’s help. Apparently, someone slaughtered his _entire tribe_ – including Freedom Beast, who’d been trying to protect them. Congorilla got to Beast as he was dying, and Beast only managed to share that the perpetrators were after a scientist from Gorilla City, by the name of Malavar.”

“Who’s the blue one?”

“I’m getting to it, geez. Congorilla tried to follow the scent – literally – and he met Starman in the process. Now get this: Starman had gone through almost the exact same thing. His boyfriend, Tony Brooks, was killed by masked villains. Tony worked for S.T.A.R. Labs.”

“Wait… Ray said Mike Dante was an assistant of Professor Hyatt’s.” Roy turned to Dick, wide-eyed. “You think we got a killer out for scientists, specifically?”

“Oh, it gets even more relevant than that,” Donna continued. “Once Congorilla and Starman figured out their meeting meant they had found the same trail, they decided to team up. Their leads took them to Paris, where they found the ones involved in both murders – two ex-members of Helix, Arak Wind-Walker and Penny Dreadful.”

“What the fuck is Helix?”

“One of Infinity Inc.’s rogue teams,” Dick offered.

“What the fuck is— you know what, this world has way too many superhero and supervillain teams.”

“You’ve _met_ Power Girl.”

“They are to the JSA as the Teen Titans are to the JL— oh, never mind.” Donna sighed. “The point being, the same thing you said happened to Killer Moth happened to these two. Well, to Penny Dreadful, anyway. She killed the other guy herself when he was about to spill.”

“She killed her own partner?” Roy frowned. “Either the villains are really loyal to whoever’s calling the shots here… or really, really afraid of them.”

“Congorilla came to Buddy because he said the scent went dead at Paris,” Kory contributed. “Donna and I promised to help, however we can, so here we are— though Buddy wishes to take this to Dinah and the others.”

“It’s not a competition. If they get to the bottom of this first, good,” Mari reasoned.

Dick nodded. “You’re right. It only means that many more hands on deck. Excuse me, I need to make a call.” And he left the room, without explanation. Roy arched an eyebrow, but figured he was better off waiting, Dick usually knew best. He turned to Kory.

“So, how come you guys are bunking at the Baker’s? You know if you need a place to crash, I got plenty of room.”

“It’s only until Donna and I find an apartment of our own,” Kory explained.

“Oh, okay.” Roy mulled it over, and then realised what she’d said. He turned from her smiling face, to Donna holding back a grin of her own, and squinted. “Wait…”

Donna nodded, slightly flushed. “Mm-hmm.”

“You and—?”

Kory twirled a lock of curly hair around her finger in a self-conscious gesture, smiling shyly. “Mm-hmm.”

“Holy shit!” Roy beamed. “Congratulations!”

“What?” Mari looked between them all, curious. “What just happened?”

“How long do you think until Dick figures it out?” Donna asked with a grin, nudging Kory playfully. Kory’s laugh was bright as her glow.

“Oh, about another thousand years.”

Dick returned, interrupting them mid-laughter. “Alright, our first priority should be to secure as many untargeted research labs as we can, as covertly as we can. It’s a good thing we’re a small team at the minute, our perpetrator can’t suspect that we’re onto them. I already asked Wally to keep an extra eye out on Garrick Labs. Ladies, if you could cover the Steelworks in Metropolis, the Time Institute, Magnus Labs, even Cadmus – Roy, while they’re on that, you’re coming to Gotham with me.”

“Why Roy?” Kendra demanded, suspicious.

“No meta-humans allowed in Gotham. Sorry,” Dick answered, curt and not sounding all that apologetic.

Roy hurried to cut in before either of them could get another word out. “Roger that. What’s in Gotham, again?”

“Questioning orders?” Dick gave him a small, but playful smile, and Roy couldn’t fight the bright feeling that raced up his spine at the pleasant surprise, the nostalgia of it all.

“Who, me? Perish the thought.”

“Let’s go.” Kendra’s voice startled Roy out of his brief reverie, and he realised his gaze on Dick may have been _lingering_ a little, there. Shit. But nobody else brought it up, as they all headed to the teleporters, leaving him and Dick alone.

“Come armed, by the way, Roy.”

Roy blinked. “Uh… Arsenal, human switchblade, remember? I’m always armed.”

“Good. And while I don’t advocate attacking children…” Dick gave him a sheepish smile. “Feel free to defend yourself.”

* * *

The teleporter phased them out straight into the Bat-cave, and Roy only had a fraction of a second to mourn the subtle, but inevitable change in Dick’s composure as he slipped into Big Brother mode before a knife came flying right at him. “What the fuck,” Roy commented flatly, a duck of his head having forced the blade to lodge into the tube doors instead.

“Damian…” Dick sighed. “Stand down. He’s one of the League.”

From out of the shadows, a kid who couldn’t be that much older than Lian stepped out, something defiant in the tilt of his chin as he pointed a sword at Roy. He didn’t look like Bruce – brownish skin, hazel eyes – and when he spoke, it was with an accent that suggested an English education and Middle Eastern roots. “I don’t know him.”

“Red Arrow, Damian. Damian, Red Arrow. Please put the sword away, Alfred’s at the end of his rope tidying up after us, you know…”

“Father did not tell us of any unexpected guests!”

“ _Father_ doesn’t have to know every little detail,” Dick muttered, irritated but by some inhuman effort still appearing calm. “He’s only here to help follow up on a lead, relax.”

“’Sup.” Roy gave the curious kid a wave, only to earn a glare and a whole one-eighty turn. “Okay… nice to meet you, too?”

“That’s exactly what Drake said as well. You’re working on something together,” Damian accused (Roy resigned himself to being treated like he was basically air), but Dick only looked confused by this information.

“Tim’s home?”

As if on cue, the sound of the clock-slash-door above them sliding open drifted down, followed by short, quick footsteps. Tim stopped in his tracks at the bottom of the stairs, surprised. “Dick— Roy? What…”

“Welcome back,” Dick said, crossing his arms. “Where have you been?”

To Roy’s surprise, Tim – who, last he remembered, worshipped the ground Dick walked on – actually _scowled_ , and turned away sullenly. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Do you know how worried Alfred and I have—”

“Worried enough to tell _him_ to lay off me?” Tim demanded, and for a second, Roy thought he meant Bruce, but then Tim threw an accusatory glare at Damian.

Damian only scoffed. “Good riddance, I say.”

“Oh, for crying out— Damian, will you _please_ stop antagonising your—”

“You are _not_ my brothers.” Damian glared. “He is _my_ father. By blood. Both of you can just leave the manor and I will still say _good riddance_. It’s not yours.”

Yeesh. Roy gave Dick a nervous side-glance, but Dick’s expression was almost pitying, not angry. “No, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I can’t believe you.” Tim sounded so hurt, Roy felt bad for the poor kid. And he felt worse for Dick, torn now between two clearly upset children, through no real fault of his own.

“I demand to know what you’re investigating.” Damian even threw in a stomp and everything.

“Justice League stuff, nothing to do with Robin,” Roy tried, but apparently he’d only put his foot in his mouth, because it was like the word thickened the tension thrice over.

“I’m not Robin.” Tim glared at Dick, and Roy frowned, confused. Then he scornfully jutted his chin out in Damian’s direction, adding, “ _That’s_ Robin.”

“Wait, what?”

Dick sighed, and he sounded so tired, Roy wanted to scoop him up bridal-style, throw him into bed, and force him to sleep. “For the last time, Tim, he’s _training_ to be Robin, no one has greenlit him being out on the field.”

“I’m ready!”

“You are _not_. Tim, where are you going?”

“Somewhere I’m wanted.”

“Tim—”

But he was gone, the black cape of his new uniform billowing out behind him as he stormed back up the stairs. “Childish.” Damian scoffed.

“Bruce made his kid Robin instead of Tim? That’s cold.”

Foot-in-mouth moment the second, apparently, because as soon as Roy said it, the atmosphere felt about a million times more uncomfortable. Damian’s anger seemed to turn inward, and Dick gave him a concerned look. “Grayson made me Robin. Not Father.”

“And Robin is my mantle to pass down, not his,” Dick instantly returned. “No matter what he or Tim seem to think.”

When Damian met Dick’s eyes, Roy was struck by how easily the bravado had slipped away, leaving him looking like the vulnerable kid he was supposed to be. “I _will_ be Batman, someday.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, not them.

“Maybe.” Dick gave him a sympathetic smile, then reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “But you _are_ Robin now, and no one can take that away from you. Promise.”

“I will not stand for your pity, Grayson!” Damian snapped, swatting Dick’s hand away. Then he stormed off, shaken.

“Shit.” Dick shut his eyes tight, pinching the bridge of his nose like he was fending off a monster of a headache. “Fucked it up again.”

“What? From where I was standing, you were doing better than good with _that_ mess.”

“You don’t understand. Put yourself in Damian’s shoes, alright, being left in the care of this father you don’t know a thing about, besides that he’s Batman, having nothing but his legacy to cling onto because no one ever taught you how to deal with people. And then imagine _no one in your supposed family liking you_ , see: not knowing how to deal with people. He doesn’t know what his standing here is, which is why he keeps doubling down on the only thing he has over us, that he and Bruce are blood-related. It’s clearly because he’s terrified of not being a part of this without it. I gave him Robin so he knows he belongs here, even if Bruce isn’t— the best at showing it. Or at least that he belongs with me, if he has nowhere else.”

“Dick…”

“And then put yourself in Tim’s shoes. Lost your father, lost the love of your life, came uncomfortably close to losing your _other_ father, and now your brother seems to be siding with this— this complete stranger who rags on all of your insecurities, over you.” Dick shook his head. “No matter what I choose, it will still be the wrong decision. I _am_ fucking it up, I can’t _not_.”

“But it’s not _on_ you, Dick, you’re not being fair to yourself.”

“Who is it on? Who else is going to take responsibility for these poor— they’re only boys, Roy, only children. You tell me.” Dick looked so, so world-weary. “Ever since Conner, Tim hasn’t been— no, but I’m making excuses. I’d hate me, too, if I were him.”

Roy nodded, slow and sympathetic. “I did notice… the black and red…”

“It’s quite the gesture.”

“Yeah. Understatement. I mean, would you wear my colours if something happened to me?”

It was supposed to be a joke, a tease, to lighten the mood a little. But Dick whipped around like Roy had said something _profane_. “The only thing I’d be wearing if something happened to you is a _body-bag_.” Dick rushed it out, sounding horrified. “Please don’t put the thought in my mind, Roy, I have lost— too fucking much…”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.” Roy hurried to reassure him, wide-eyed. “Stupid joke. I’m all here.”

Dick reached out for his hand, like he needed to remind himself that Roy was, in fact, still breathing. He squeezed once, then he seemed to shake himself out of it, returning his attention to the mission at hand. “Right, um— come with me.”

“Behind you always,” Roy promised. They made their way up the stairs, out into the familiar hallway. Roy hadn’t seen the place in what felt like forever, but not much had changed – the manor seemed timeless. Nostalgia hit him hard as they climbed up another floor and passed Dick’s old bedroom. “Aw, man, remember when—”

“Keep it PG, Red – that’s Tim’s room now,” Dick cut in with a little smile. Roy grinned, unapologetic. The things Bruce hadn’t known had gone on under his own roof with the son-in-law he never would have wanted…

He realised Dick seemed to be heading for the upstairs study, which could only spell trouble. “I thought you said we weren’t telling him,” Roy pointed out, confused.

“Change of plans. Weird things have been happening in Gotham, too, villains showing up that aren’t even from here. I think there might be a connection – think about it, the places where all the incidents we know of so far happened are oddly spread out. Albuquerque, South Africa, Paris… that’s some coverage. If villains are being deliberately sent out by somebody like we suspect, it would explain Gotham’s recent _tourist boom_ as well.”

He stopped in front of the study door then turned, lowering his voice. “Meaning it concerns him. Roy, fair warning – ever since he got hurt, he’s been…” Dick seemed to struggle for words, and then settled for a simple shake of the head. “Just— keep your temper in check. You know he has his good days, these just aren’t… it.”

That didn’t bode well. Dick knocked, then pushed the door open, and Roy had to blink to adjust to the sudden darkness. Geez, and Bruce wondered where the vampire rumours came from. His eyes noted the wheelchair behind the desk, Bruce looking oddly small in it, as he glanced up from his computer screen, the only source of light since he had drawn the thick blinds closed around his windows. He opened his mouth as if he’d been about to address Dick, then noticed Roy, and pursed his lips. “Roy.”

“Bruce.” Roy nodded, unable to resist throwing a mocking salute with two of his fingers.

“I would have thought you’d join the splinter team.”

“What can I say, I’m full of surprises.” Roy grinned, sarcastic.

“Roy brought this to our notice, Bruce, he’s been invaluable to the investigation,” Dick said, and Roy rolled his eyes. It was always like this – Dick getting defensive as if Bruce had any right to a say in who he did and didn’t associate with in the first place. “What do you make of it?”

Bruce exhaled, and Roy could already hear the criticism coming. “Dick… what is this, it’s not a case for the JLA. It sounds personal.”

“I— I know, but it’s what made Palmer push Hal into formalising the other team to begin with, I just thought— this could mend the rift. And the sightings in Gotham, lately, what if there’s—”

“This isn’t the Titans. Leading the Justice League requires more than what you might have done with them. You need to see a scope that extends beyond one immediate operation.”

Dick deflated, and Roy fought hard not to reach for the small of his back, steady him. “I understand, but with such a small team and so little information on the perpetrators we have no choice but to do this one step at a—”

“Which is exactly why it could have been handled by Palmer himself, or Hal’s team if they’re so hell-bent on stirring up trouble. Not the League. You’re wasting time and resources.”

“But… you said I could call the shots, that I was ready…”

“I thought you were. Dick, you’re calm, confident, able to intimidate and ingratiate at the same time… but you have always been a reflexive thinker. You need to evolve. You’re not hard enough on yourself.”

That was _it_ , fuck keeping his temper in check. Roy’s eyes flashed as he snapped, “Not hard enough on himself!?”

“Roy—”

“No, Dick, how can you just take that? And what the hell, Bruce, is it your life’s mission to run his self-esteem into the ground, or something?”

“My _son_ knows better than to conflate professional and personal criticism, thank you.” Bruce arched one infuriatingly judgmental eyebrow. “Dick— I’m sorry, I can’t help you. My advice is, drop the case. It looks pointless.”

“I…” Dick’s voice was uncomfortably shaky, none of his usual confidence in the face of his father, as per. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Bruce, if we don’t make the effort to meet Dinah and Hal and the others in the middle, the League will never be the same again. No one wants that, surely? Aren’t they your teammates, despite whatever differences—?”

“ _Again_ , you’re thinking of this like you’re still on the Titans.” Bruce shook his head with an exasperated sigh. “We’re allies, we’re not friends. If you’re so set on a course of action, then why did you call for my input in the first place?”

Dick hung his head, one hand curling around the other arm, like a chastised child. “I just thought you’d approve of my— of the… decision that was made. I’m sorry.”

Unable to bear it, Roy cut in again. “ _You’re_ sorry? What the hell did you do? _He’s_ the one that’s acting like it’d kill him to throw you a fucking bone, every once in a while, to tell you when you’re doing something right—”

Bruce glared. “How does this concern you, again? All these years and you still act as immature as when you were fourteen.”

“No, actually, I’m _far_ more pissed off than I would have been at fourteen, because I got a kid of my own now,” Roy snapped. “Don’t get it twisted, asshole, this isn’t a tantrum, it’s me judging the fuck out of your parenting skills, one father to another. Christ, turn around and look at the state of your family! Dick’s the only thing holding this shit together, you ungrateful son of a—”

“Roy, please wait outside.” Dick’s voice was quiet, but firm.

“But—”

“It’s an order.” He wouldn’t meet Roy’s eyes. “I’ll be right out.”

Heart sinking, Roy went, reluctant. He stood outside the door for a second, but he was too restless with worry to stand still, and ended up going all the way outside, to the front gardens. God— when he hadn’t heard from Dick in over a year, he’d been concerned, but would never have guessed it would be _this_ bad. To think of Dick doing the utmost to keep this ship from sinking, while still working through his own trauma – when had the last time been, that anybody in this fucking mausoleum of a house bothered to ask Dick how he was doing? Did anyone _know_ all the shit he had been through, the catatonia and dissociation and insomnia and night terrors he still suffered because of it?

There was guilt written all over his face when Dick finally stepped out. “Sorry I—” he began, but Roy shook his head, sympathetic.

“Oh, Pretty Bird. I had no idea. You’re _suffocating_.”

Dick stopped in his tracks, eyes wide. “Me? I’m fine, Roy, it’s Bruce that’s been through hell lately. Don’t judge him too harshly, he’s just missing being Batman and leading the JLA himself.” He joined Roy under the shade of the overhang above the front entrance. “I wasted your time, I thought Bruce might have had some insight that could give us another crumb…”

“That was plenty insightful to me.” Roy gave him a look that was equal parts concerned and full of respect. “How do you do it? Isn’t it ever tempting to just— fuck right off, and let Bruce try to deal with all of this himself, see how he likes it?”

Dick sighed. “And leave Cass and Tim and Damian to get the brunt of it, instead? What did they do? I’m the adult, I can deal. You know, they never got to see Bruce at his best, like me and Jay did. All they know is… and he means well, think of me as a pushover all you want, I won’t change my mind there.”

“Dick…” Roy hesitated, then curled a tentative hand around his, bolder when Dick didn’t pull away. “It’s not that. I would never think any less of you for how much of yourself you give to them. I just wish they’d stop taking it for granted.” He met Dick’s eyes, his own soft and pitying. “You are doing _nothing_ wrong. Heck, you’re doing _amazing_. Look at everything you’re taking on all on your own, precious, I’m so, so proud of you…”

“Stop it, I’m going to cry.” Dick laughed under his breath, quiet and rueful, his gaze turning this way and that to keep away tears. “You spoil me, Roy Harper. It’s not about me. I owe Bruce far too much to make it about me. He has done— God. I’m forever in his debt, okay? My life is forfeit. That’s just the way it is.”

“He has no clue what he’s got, in you.” Roy sighed. “Look, I did drag you into this, if you don’t want to rock the boat at home I completely under—”

“I only said I get why Bruce thinks the way he thinks, not that I’d drop the case.” Having collected himself, Dick smiled again. “Come on. He’s not my only source of information.”

* * *

“Is it the law in Gotham to conduct every important conversation on a rooftop?” Roy wondered aloud, as he stared down at the busy city streets while Dick casually leaned next to him, faced in the opposite direction. It was nearing twilight now, a distinct chill descending on them. Roy was glad he’d worn his trench-coat over his uniform, even if it was more of an Arsenal thing, and as the breeze began to pick up he shrugged out of it one sleeve at a time. Dick gave him a questioning look – Roy held the coat out to him. When Dick still didn’t take it, confused, Roy gave it a little insistent shake. “Here, I know how cold you get.”

Dick seemed dumbfounded, but after a loaded pause, he took it and wrapped it around himself. Roy pretended not to notice him burying his face in a lapel like he’d missed the smell of nicotine gum and aftershave, for whatever bizarre reason that would be. “Thank you…”

“So, who is this Jason Bard and why doesn’t he have a warm office we could have met up in?”

“Private Investigator. He’s good at what he does.” Dick shifted. “He’s on Bruce’s payroll, but this is a favour to Barbara. She ranks higher on the chain of command to him, trust me.”

“I’m guessing _she’s_ pulling favours as a favour to _you_.”

“Well, I did ask nicely.”

Roy thought, what the hell, and asked, “Are you guys… you know… a thing, again?”

“No.” Dick gave him a wry smile. “And don’t play with fire, Red, you’re the one that wants an annulment.”

 _How is that fair_ , Roy had been about to protest, but they were interrupted by the sound of footsteps and the distinct tapping of a cane. “Gentlemen.”

“Bard.” Dick nodded. The man in front of them wasn’t very impressive – average height, black-and-white clothing, mousy hair. His posture suggested one foot took more of his weight than the other, which explained the cane. Without preamble, he went on, “Air’s killing my bad leg, so let’s make this quick. Oracle said to be on the lookout for… suspicious gatherings of villains?”

“I think any gathering of villains implies _suspicious_ ,” Roy pointed out.

“Have you seen or heard of any, lately?”

“You know as well as I do it’s been a free-for-all out there, Nightwing.” Bard nodded toward the streets below. “Red Hood taking over a good chunk of the city isn’t exactly helping, either.”

“We’re all doing our best to maintain the peace without Batman,” Dick said, like an excuse, and Roy realised he’d taken the statement as though Bard was accusing him, personally, of not doing enough. Fucking _Dick_. “Red Hood’s methods are… not what we endorse, but he’s not the one I mean, you can rule out any of his.”

“Well then, that leaves one other possibility – and it’s why I called you out here.” Bard pointed forward. “See that building? Javelin and Hellgrammite were spotted leaving that building. Two cats that would be a long way from home, huh.”

Roy turned to Dick. “Javelin? I think that’s one of Hal’s—”

Instinct yelled at him to _duck_ , all of a sudden, and he and Dick yanked Jason Bard down to the ground – just in time to hear the massive _boom_. Scattered debris came shooting up at them, but thankfully not much, the explosion had been too far below. When Roy finally deemed it safe enough to look over, the building Bard had just indicated to them was up in flames.

Worse, it was familiar balls of green light that had kept the civilians scattered around safe. Roy gave Dick a sheepish look. “I… might have left out a couple details when I briefed you.”

“Thank you for your time,” Dick said to Bard, a dismissal. “I know you always have your ear to the ground, so please keep me updated if you learn more.”

“Roger that. You take care.”

Dick and Roy threw their grappling hooks over and made their way down as swiftly as they could. Sure enough, Hal, Ollie, and Dinah were at the scene already – along with Ray, Captain Marvel or Shazam or whatever he went by these days, and Supergirl. They were also all inexplicably covered in clumps of what looked like wet clay.

“Dad.”

Ollie looked up, surprised, when the two of them ran over to the team. “Oh, you’re here. Uh, interrogation gone wrong. Clayface went kaboom,” he offered, by way of explanation.

“ _Details_ , we’re working on the same case.” Roy gestured toward Dick, grinning. “The JLA is on this as well, our new leadership is big on compromise.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Dinah stepped up, giving Dick a short nod. “Nightwing. We were following a lead and came across some kind of meeting here, but before we could get any answers…”

“There might be survivors.” Hal sounded worryingly short on patience. “Supergirl, would you help me sift through this debris?”

“I see you have new recruits,” Dick noted. Captain Whatever-His-Name-Was-Now stepped forward with an acknowledging tilt of the head.

“Hi, I’m Freddy Freeman. There was an attack on S.T.A.R. Labs in Fawcett, and Ray said it was similar to the one they’re all looking into, so I tagged along… Supergirl says she’s looking deeper into her father’s murder and could use a team to help.”

“Jay Garrick noted that the Fawcett hit mirrors two other incidents in Metropolis and Ivy Town,” Ray added. “He and Miss Martian are investigating as well.”

“That’s quite the roster already,” Roy remarked, impressed.

“Yeah, well. Lot of people looking for justice that couldn’t find it with the Justice League.”

“It’s starting to snowball, isn’t it.” Dick narrowed his eyes. “The sheer scope, that’s what worries me, it’s like they’re everywhere…”

“Takes a lot to mobilise so many people toward a common goal, villain or hero,” Ray agreed. “Whoever’s at the top is either the most charismatic bastard of their kind, or so terrible they scare the rest of them shitless.”

“Damn it. No sign of life.” Hal came stomping back toward them, shutting off the scanning beam of the ring.

“Well that’s it, then, dead end for now.” Dinah clicked her tongue. “Unless we figure out a way to disable those explosive implants first, it’s going to be the same story over and over again. And then whoever’s behind this is going to realise we’re onto them, if they haven’t already… shit. This is going to be a race, we _need_ to unmask their leader before they get a chance to plan for us. Maybe we’re going at this wrong, maybe— if they’re scouting villains, we could always talk to villains who’d be willing to act with us against a bigger threat…”

She sent Roy a meaningful look, and he shook his head firmly. “Oh, no. No way am I putting Chesh in that much danger, what if this leader never even approached her, and consulting her only gives them ideas? You talk to Red Hood, Wings.”

“My brother may be… misguided… in his actions, at the moment, but he’s also clearly not in his right mind. I’m not putting him in harm’s way either.”

“Fair enough.” Dinah sighed. “Looks like we’re out of clues.”

“Well… not quite.” Ollie sounded awkward. “Think I might be able to do that for you. Right here in Gotham, as a matter of fact…”

“Really?” Supergirl gave him an awed look. “What are we waiting for, then, let’s go!”

“Just a second, I need to come up with a way to spin this so it sounds like it could affect the cause,” Ollie muttered.

Roy frowned, confused. “What cause?”

“You know.” Ollie sighed. “Anarchy.”

* * *

Ollie had insisted that his ‘associate’ would take the presence of meta-humans as a threat, so it was up to Roy and Dick to wait with him atop yet another rooftop, because Gotham. “I don’t like this,” Dick said for the millionth time. “Anarky is unpredictable, and way too self-serving.”

“Self-serving? Anarky?” Ollie raised an eyebrow. “I can see why all you Bats call him a villain, talk about misunderstanding…”

“What else would you call someone whose entire driving force is that people should be able to do what they want, regardless of the law?”

“Sane.”

Dick sighed, resigned. “Forgot who I was talking to.”

“Hey, look, movement.” Roy pointed.

The flowing red cloak came into view first, billowing out impressively in the night breeze, and then settling… to reveal a golden mask that glinted against the moonlight. Anarky had leapt up onto the roof. “ _Green Arrow_ ,” a tinny voice greeted – or rather, it sounded like multiple voices, old, young, male, female, all at once.

“Thanks for coming.”

“ _We merely honour a comrade who has worked with us time and again. We will not take orders._ ”

“Wouldn’t even dream of suggesting it.” Roy couldn’t tell if Ollie was being sarcastic. “Bat-boy here is clear, by the way, he won’t sell you to the big guy. And this is my son.”

“ _What is the purpose of this visit?_ ”

Ollie seemed to take in a breath. “So here’s the thing. Someone is out there trying to recruit villains— uh, not that I’m saying you’re a villain, but, well, since that’s what people think and all. I’m interested in anything you may have heard about… anyone like that…”

“ _And if we have, why should we tell you? So you can bring him to the system’s flawed definition of justice?_ ”

“No, no, uh, fuck the j-word,” Ollie backtracked. “Look, I know you got a really wide network of anarchists ’round the world at the moment. I also know there’s a high chance their mission gets interpreted the same way these Bats do, here in Gotham. Who’s to say this— whoever it is, isn’t going to go after them as well, hijack them for their cause? You wouldn’t want to be controlled, after all, right?”

Silence for a minute, and then the voices spoke again. “ _We have a lot of respect for you, Green Arrow._ ”

“I mean, right back at you,” Ollie said, sincere. “We’re fighting the same fight, yeah? Swear I wouldn’t ask if this phantom of ours didn’t desperately need to be stopped.”

“ _You do not know the extent of it. He calls himself the villains’ Batman. This is because he weaponises fear, like Batman. We despise Batman. We despise control through fear._ ”

Ollie exhaled a relieved breath. “Great. Fuck Batman. So you know the guy.”

“ _Prometheus. Like the titan who stole fire from the gods. He perverts our ideology. Claims he will empower humankind. We have seen his methods and disagree. He is like Batman._ ”

“Yeah, I got that part.”

“ _We are not sure you understand. Batman has a failsafe for every member of the Justice League, yes? Prometheus is the same. That is how he controls them._ ”

Roy and Dick exchanged a look. Someone who had something on _every single_ villain?

“That’s quite a claim,” Ollie noted, too. “What’s he after, exactly? Empowering humankind how?”

“ _The fire. The fire of invention. He is like us. Human. He only uses a human’s best claim to near-omnipotence – technology._ ”

“It’s only been research labs that were targeted so far,” Dick observed. “He’s building something… do you know what?”

“ _That is all we are at liberty to say._ ”

Ollie frowned. “You’re going to be okay, though, right? Meeting us isn’t going to put you in his sights, is it?”

“ _You know better than to think Anarky can be killed, Green Arrow. But we are cautious._ ”

“Good. You know how to reach me if you need me, friend.”

“ _We are grateful._ ” Just when Roy thought the conversation was over, the cloaked figure added, “ _A warning. It is Batman Prometheus is both emulating and seeking to destroy. It is not you._ ”

Ollie blinked. “Uh… no shit? I’m pretty sure no A-List villain is ever after me, my mission is more abstract than Batty’s.”

“ _It is Batman he worships. He thinks Batman represents the heights humanity can achieve on its own in a world where Supermen and meta-genes exist._ ”

“No need to rub it in, geez,” Ollie grumbled.

“ _You misunderstand._ ” Through the slits in the mask, Roy could see green eyes that were uncannily like his and Ollie’s. “ _We are merely pointing out that he would not anticipate you._ ”

The look on Ollie’s face was unreadable. And then, he exhaled an amused breath. “Some little punk who thinks tech is the answer to a crisis of existence? Hell, no. I’m a twentieth century man. It’s not my fight.”

“ _Then you will forgive us for hoping he will make it your fight,_ ” was the ominous answer, and then, in a whirl of red cloth, Anarky was out of there.

“Well, that was enlightening.”

“I don’t like the sound of any of it,” Dick muttered. “If Bruce is so central to this guy’s motivation— damn. This would be the opportune time to target him, he’s vulnerable.”

“I’ll report back to Dinah, but Dick, I think we ought to pool resources for this one,” Ollie agreed. “How would you feel about sharing the Watchtower? If you’re right and this Prometheus fella is building something, we’ll need to rethink how we’ve been looking at these murders – find out what the people who died were researching, spot any patterns. Could take us all night, and I’m not cramming everybody into my house. Roy, Mia can watch Lian, I’ll let her know.”

Dick nodded. “Fine by me.”

“Uh, boss, we should probably head back sooner rather than later,” Roy spoke up. He held up his phone screen, bearing the news alert that the Flash Museum had been broken into.

* * *

Three more dead. Roy couldn’t tell who was beating himself up over it more, Dick or Wally. Dick seemed to think he’d made the wrong call securing the other labs, to which Roy had to patiently point out that it had definitely been a better-safe-than-sorry situation, and couldn’t have hurt. Wally was re-evaluating his priorities, and finally accepted full-time Leaguer status again, if only to bring this asshole to justice. The Watchtower was fuller than it had been in ages, more heroes available now to keep all their bases covered.

“You should get some sleep, Roy,” Dinah coaxed, sometime past midnight. Probably a nicer way of saying _everybody else has got this covered and you have nothing to contribute_. It wasn’t like she was wrong, though, and once Plastic Man took over his shift in the monitor room, Roy relented.

“Has anybody seen Kendra, by the way?”

“Quarters,” Hal offered.

With a nod and a quick thank-you, Roy made his way to the living quarters reserved for overnights like this. Sure enough, Kendra was waiting for him in their room, already changed out of her uniform and into civvies. “Well, that stakeout was pointless,” was the first thing she said.

“Don’t blame yourself. We couldn’t have predicted the Flash Museum was next, it didn’t fit what we knew of so far.”

“Oh, I’m not blaming myself.” Kendra scoffed. “I’m blaming your fearless leader. Quick on the uptake every time except for when it counts, huh.”

Roy bristled. “He’s trying his best, alright? Jesus, he’s not invincible, one person can only do so much.”

“Why are you so defensive?”

“I’m not! I’m just saying, blame the fucker behind the attack, don’t blame Dick. What the hell.”

Kendra narrowed her eyes at him. “You know what,” she said, eventually, “I don’t think it’s Jade I should have been worried about, after all.”

Roy stiffened. “What… is that supposed to mean?”

“You think I haven’t noticed how different you act, now that they’re here? That Wonder Chick and Starfire and… him? I have never seen you this carefree around us.”

Incredulous, Roy turned around to face her. “You’re mad that I missed my friends? What?”

“I am not. I’m mad that you’re a giant hypocrite, Roy Harper.” She huffed, something like derision in that single breath.

Flushing, Roy stood and went right back out the door. Kendra was calling after him, but he ignored her, frustrated. The training room. He had to get some steam out. He couldn’t help but recall how simple the rest of the day had felt, before this, and that only reminded him that ease was something he couldn’t _have_ anymore, if he couldn’t have Dick. God, how do you tell your fiancée that it wasn’t that you had commitment issues like she kept accusing, it was that you had already-committed-to-somebody- _else_ issues?

 _Snap out of it, Harper_. He realised he hadn’t grabbed gym clothes, and so he stripped down to his waist instead. He didn’t know how long he’d spent taking his feelings out on a punching bag or two, but by the time he thought to take a break, the silence outside the room said everyone else must be fast asleep. Sighing, Roy took another gulp of water, and then he set the bottle down, surveying the room for something else to do. He absently grabbed a broadsword off of its rack, swinging it around in aimless, powerful circles, just to feel in control of _something_.

“You make it look like that sword weighs about as much as a feather.”

Roy dropped the blade with a loud _clang_ , startled. “Wings!” he exclaimed, whirling around. “Jesus, give a guy a heart attack…”

Dick was still in uniform, unmasked, and leaning against the open door. He had Roy’s coat, folded over his crossed arms, but the look in his eyes— Roy watched Dick watch him, recognising the hunger in it, suddenly hyperaware of the fact that he was shirtless.

He smiled, arching a teasing eyebrow. “Earth to Grayson. Seeing something you like, Pretty Bird?”

It seemed to pull Dick out of his reverie, but when he closed his half-open mouth, it only curled into a bittersweet smile of his own. “…I’m only human, Roy.”

And shit. Suddenly there was nothing funny about the situation at all. Roy closed the distance between them like every step could have triggered a landmine. By the time he was right in front of Dick, he could see the flush across his face for himself. “Um, I…” Dick cleared his throat. “I was going to return your jacket— woke Kendra, she said you left, I figured you’d be more likely to be in here than… anywhere else…” the words trailed away.

Roy took the cloth when he was handed it, and their knuckles brushed, and it was electric, like the romance novels said. “Thanks…” Roy tried, but even that came out like a whisper. Dick’s eyes were travelling a really dangerous route as Roy followed them, down-linger-up. He couldn’t help pressing his luck, stepping closer, until their foreheads touched. Dick didn’t pull away. One of his hands, oh so tentatively, came up and rested against Roy’s bare chest— and then he was mapping as much skin as he had access to, like he’d _missed_ it.

Swallowing hard, Roy reached out, nudging Dick’s chin up with one finger. His eyes were over-bright, but when Roy finally leaned down, he was kissing back, just as desperately. “I need—” but Roy didn’t even have to finish the sentence before Dick was pulling him by the hand, the hallways blurring into one another until at last they were in Dick’s room, slamming the door shut behind them. The click of the lock interrupted the haze long enough for Roy to reluctantly ease his lips away from Dick’s and confirm, “What’s out of bounds?”

“Nothing, to you,” Dick whispered. He raised his hands to the back of his neck, unzipping his uniform, and Roy watched the slow glide downward till it caught in Dick’s shoulders and a simple pull made the rest just drop, just pool around his feet. It didn’t matter how many times Roy had seen him unclothed, he was— fuck, so stunning, some fairy creature out of a Renaissance painting, and as if on autopilot he reached for Dick’s waist, running his thumb over the _R.H._ inked into his skin, split diagonally by a little arrow.

Proof that someone like him could have someone like this. Never failed to floor him.

Gently, Dick nudged him backward until his knees hit the edge of the bed and he had no choice but to sit. And then with a grace that made it seem like there was an art to this too, Dick knelt in the space between Roy’s spread legs, hands on his thighs, subservient blue eyes turned toward him. “Can I…?”

“Please.” Roy couldn’t fight the eagerness in his voice, there. Then— then Dick was unzipping him too, and his head was buried in his lap, and Roy had to reach a hand out to help steady him by the back of his hair, there was so much urgency in it. Something primal in Roy couldn’t help wanting _more_ , and he stopped Dick before that mouth of his could push him over the edge, breaths hard. “I want to be inside you…”

Dick got up off his knees and kissed him. “Okay.”

“I don’t have—”

“Doesn’t matter, I need you…” And Dick sat next to him, pulled his legs up, melted into one more kiss as Roy pushed him gently down. His back curled in a helpful arch so Roy could slip the last of his clothing off, and then there were no more barriers between skin and moistening skin.

“Who else has…?” Roy wanted to know, slipping a finger in absently. Dick made a small noise, then shook his head.

“No one. Just you.”

Incredulous, Roy’s eyes shot up. “At all? In _ten years_?”

“You said… only women,” Dick explained.

It was like something gave way inside his heart, and Roy surged into another kiss, teary and overwhelmed. “And I haven’t fallen in love again, I did save it for you—”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry,” Dick whispered, wrapping both arms around his shoulders and holding tight as Roy pushed in.

Amazing how somebody else’s body could feel like home. They made love long into the night, till they were boneless in each other’s arms, too exhausted to do anything else but sleep. “It’s you, it’s always been you,” Roy whispered into Dick’s bare shoulder, half-conscious. “Dick, my first love, last love, best love…”

Dick didn’t answer, but the hand that was in Roy’s was shaking.

When he woke, it was to the sound of hitched, staccato breaths. Confused, Roy blinked open his sleep-heavy lids, and found Dick sitting up beside him, crying into his lap. “Whoa, hey.” Roy sat up as well, concern making him wide awake now. “What’s the matter, baby?”

Dick looked up, teardrops still caught in his long lashes. “Oh, Roy, we shouldn’t have done this.” He exhaled, shaky and remorseful. “I’m not that kind of person.”

“What kind of person?”

“Who sleeps with somebody else’s fiancé!” Dick’s voice was uncomfortably shrill.

Roy half-shushed him, half rubbed soothing circles into his back like he was trying to comfort an upset child. “You mean someone who sleeps with their own husband? Dickie, baby, you know I’ll break it off with her now that me and you—”

“Don’t, okay, don’t, I already have the annulment papers drawn up and we just need to fucking sign them—” Dick pushed him away, inconsolable. “This doesn’t mean we’re back together, Roy, we can’t. We _can’t_.”

A sinking feeling settled in the pit of Roy’s stomach, and his hand on Dick’s back stopped all movement. “What do you… but… why not?”

The self-deprecating laugh that escaped Dick sounded startled out of him. “The fact that you even still ask me that…”

“No, I mean it, why not?” Roy insisted, unable to help the hurt and anger that leaked into his voice. “Tell me – it’s not like you left so much as a note to explain, the last time.”

“I’m not good for you, Roy, what is it going to take for you to realise that, how much further are you going to let me hurt you—”

“You’re the one that came onto _me_ last night!”

“I can’t, I can’t _think_ straight when I’m with you. I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t mean to?” Roy’s laugh was both unamused and scornful. “Oh, right. Your mouth _accidentally_ fell on my cock.”

“ _Stop._ ” Dick scrambled out of the sheets, picking his clothes back up, yanking them on as he raved. “I’m sorry, alright, it shouldn’t have happened, I-I got carried away and I—”

“Dick. Dick, please.” Roy got out of bed and walked over to him, taking him by the arms to stop the frantic movement. “I just, I don’t understand, talk to me, what exactly…”

He was shaking, and he wouldn’t meet Roy’s eyes, tears mapping a stubborn path down his cheeks again. “How can you see me like this and still love me every time?” he whispered. “You deserve so much better, and I can’t, I can’t _be_ better anymore, okay? I’m— _ruined_. This is not what I’m supposed to be like, I’m supposed to be strong and selfless and bright and _perfect_ —”

“Says who? Says who? Is he here?” Roy insisted, pained. “Baby. Baby, look at me. Bruce is fucking _wrong_ about you. You are at your most beautiful when you’re crying, to me, you know that? Because it tells me, that some part of you _knows_. That you deserve so much more than you get, for all that you do, because you are trying _so_ hard, and you are so, so tired. Aren’t you…? It’s okay, precious. It’s okay to be tired. You weren’t trying to hurt me. You were at the end of your rope.”

“But I _did_ , I did hurt you—”

“So did I, once – or do you have so much compassion in that heart of yours for _everybody_ but yourself that you forgot?” Roy pressed his forehead against Dick’s, unashamed that a tear of his own was trailing down along his beloved’s. “We only seem to hurt each other when we’re hurting ourselves. That has to count for something. It has to.”

“We’re not seventeen anymore.” Dick’s hand cupped his face, his eyes full of sorrow. “Do you know— that you’re straight out of a dream? That you offer me the world? I cannot… I _will_ not be that selfish, Roy. Growing older means doing the responsible thing, and the responsible thing is to _stop_ subjecting you to my disaster just so I can be loved by you.”

“Pulling away doesn’t stop me from loving you! You think I’m happier with Kendra? I’m not! I’m numb! If it isn’t you, all it is— is settling, second-best, never enough… God, Dickie, I don’t get it, I’m man enough to take it, to respect it, if you said you didn’t love me back, and that was that. But you clearly… I don’t get it.”

“I’m trying to spare you.”

“If that was the case then what you want is forgiveness, and I am _offering_ it, I keep offering it…”

“That’s exactly the problem,” Dick rushed it out on a half-panicked, half-despairing breath, and then he whirled around and forced the door open, all but running out.

“Dick, wait!” Roy didn’t even register how it must look to the others who were out and about now that dawn had arrived, Dick still clearly distressed, Roy chasing after him and pulling a shirt on as he went. But Dick wouldn’t slow down, wouldn’t give Roy a chance to catch up, and now they were headed straight for Roy’s room with no pause. “Dick—”

He pushed the door open, and Kendra, startled, looked up in complete bewilderment.

“Tell him,” Dick demanded, and Roy was shocked by the hostility in his voice. “Tell him, or I will.”

And then, while Roy was frozen in place, unsure what this was or what he was supposed to do, Dick turned and pushed past, leaving the two of them in there.


	6. Fourth Movement

There was tangible discomfort in the air even as Dick rounded the corner and disappeared out of sight. Kendra seemed to take in Roy’s crumpled clothing, resignation in her eyes when she met his, and despite the lack of hurt in them he couldn’t help feeling some amount of shame. “Kendra…” he began, but she held a hand up to silence him.

“We need to talk.”

Roy nodded, contrite. Closing the door behind himself, he turned to face her, leaning against it, hand still on the knob. “Can I go first?” he asked, keeping his voice careful, unprovocative.

Kendra didn’t say a word for a loaded minute, and then her shoulders fell, and she inclined her head in subtle assent. “Yeah. Go on.”

“I’m sorry. But I don’t think I want to go through with the wedding after all.”

She seemed to have expected it, the look in her eyes more accepting than accusatory. “You and him got together?”

“No.” Roy exhaled a silent and bitter laugh. “No, that’s… not going to happen. The truth is, Kendra, I— I didn’t come into this with the purest of motives, from the start. When I asked you out, I was fresh out of another relationship. And I was wounded, and confused, and— and I guess I was looking for…”

“A rebound?” Kendra finished for him.

Roy closed his eyes. “Yeah. That.”

“Don’t look so sorry.” She sighed, and it sounded uncharacteristically remorseful, as well. “So was I. That’s all it ever was, between us – you know it, I know it.”

“You were right to call me a hypocrite,” Roy mused. “Do you know what really makes me jealous, about you and Carter? I mean, aside from the fact that even when we were dating he treated me like less of a threat and more of an annoying obstacle that would _inevitably_ go away at some point as if I—”

“Roy.”

He sent her a sheepish smile. “You’re literally soulmates, see. And… living in a multiversal world, that sure counts for something. No matter the universe, you and he will always find each other. Me, I don’t get that. I’m in love with him, you know. Dick. And this is the only life we have to do something about it.” He sighed, heart heavy. “Maybe there’s a world out there where he and I are happy together, and we’re raising five kids like we said we would and we have a house on a hill and I’m able to protect him when it counts. I’m sure that Roy Harper is having the time of his life right now. And maybe there’s a world where our paths just never really intersected, and none of it matters. That Roy Harper’s probably doing fine too. But, well. I’m living in the one where I _will_ die, like all people die, and when I do it’s going to be with one giant regret named Dick fucking Grayson haunting me.”

“That sounds… intense.”

“I guess so. I guess it must seem stupid to you, me talking about love like this.” Roy shook his head. “And I mean, you’re not wrong. I don’t think love is some mystical thing, it’s just a feeling, and you’re supposed to be able to control your feelings, to be considerate. I like to think I’m not some entitled prick, you know, I really was trying to move on, but… how are you supposed to put out a fire if circumstance keeps stoking the goddamn ashes?”

Kendra nodded absently. “But I would say that’s all a soulmate ever really is, at the end of the day. Someone who Fate keeps bringing your way no matter how far from them you wander.”

“That’s the thing,” Roy agreed. “I can’t hold it against you, that you gravitate toward Carter, when I’m in the same doomed boat. I can’t in good conscience marry you when I know I’d be lying, whatever vows we choose. It’s just not right. Let’s call off the engagement, Kendra. You don’t want a coward like me for a husband.”

She gave him a long, hard look. Then she turned away, sighing softly. “…You’re a good person, you know that? I’m the one that owes you an apology.”

“You can’t help how you feel about him. I get that, now.”

“Not about Carter.” Her arms came up to wrap around herself, like she was cold. “You see, I— I didn’t propose with the… purest of motives, as you put it, either. Roy… back when I was alive, I was a really troubled kid. Foster homes, juvie— I’d been there, done that. Then, when I was sixteen, I… I got pregnant. And, I couldn’t afford to keep her, so I gave her up for adoption, and— and when I was satisfied that Mia had found a good home, I… killed myself.”

Roy stared at her, wide-eyed, but she seemed dead serious.

“That’s when Shiera took me for a container. But I have Kendra’s memories, not hers. I _remember_ my daughter. The only good thing in my life. I don’t— I didn’t want to lose her to Hawkgirl. I thought maybe going against Fate, marrying you instead of Carter, would hold Shiera back. And… well, Mia’s a legal adult now. I guess a part of me had this dumb fantasy of being able to face her again, if I went with a respectable family of my own.”

“That’s… Jesus, Kendra, that’s…” Roy struggled for words, letting it all sink in. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I was a teenage parent, too, you know, I get it. Hell, it… sounds like if I had met you alive and younger, we’d probably be friends. Birds of a feather.”

“I don’t know. I suppose I was scared,” she mumbled.

Roy took a minute to process, and then he sighed, meeting her eyes with determination in his own. “If that had been Lian and I was like you, I’d probably have done worse things. You did what you thought you had to. I get that. I’m sorry I can’t marry you, but… I wish you luck with your daughter, Kendra.”

“Yeah.” She gave him a rare, genuine smile, even if it was on the bittersweet side. “Thank you.”

“Friends?”

“Always.” Stepping forward, Kendra gave his shoulder a companionable squeeze. “Get some more sleep, Roy, you look drained. The troops won’t be rallying for a few hours yet.”

He nodded absently, sitting down on the edge of the bed. As she made to close the door, Kendra hesitated, then turned back around. “And Roy? Dick knew, by the way. About me. He thought I was out to hurt you, and made it clear he could and would use it against me if he had to.”

Roy’s eyes shot up, mortified. “Oh, Christ, Kendra, I’m sorry… Dick can be…”

“What I don’t understand,” she continued, “Is why he would go through all that trouble only to pass you up again.” She shook her head. “I can kind of see why your dad’s so antagonistic toward him, now, Red. Just saying.”

She left, abandoning him to his thoughts.

* * *

Easy to say he needed to rest, but sleep was hard to come by with his heart so heavy and his head so full. Roy put on a record instead, staring at the ceiling as he lay on his bed, feeling a little like a lost teenager again. He couldn’t help whisper-singing along to the bittersweet tune, _I took my love, I took it down_ …

“Busting out the Fleetwood Mac, huh. Must be some mood you’re in.”

Roy jumped, not having heard Dinah enter in the first place. She smiled at that, closing the door behind herself. “I would have knocked, but it’s Stevie Nicks. You don’t interrupt Stevie Nicks.”

“True,” Roy conceded, a half-hearted smile back. He sat up, and graciously patted the space next to him. “Thought I had another couple minutes before we needed to clock in.”

Dinah obliged, sitting down on the duvet as well. “You do. I just figured I ought to come check up on you, after the little, uh… scene, this morning.”

“Oh, fuck.” Roy groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I dread to ask, but what’s the gossip like?”

“ _Fuck_ would be it.” Dinah laughed, though her tone was sympathetic. “Don’t worry about it, Roy. Everybody who knows you two suspects you got unfinished business.”

“Really? But Dick’s so private…”

“You boys have no idea how much you give away when you’re around each other.” Dinah shook her head, amused. “You’d have to be blind not to see the chemistry.”

“That’s a nice thought.” Roy smiled to himself, despite the pang it sent through his heart. “Kendra and I decided to split, by the way. Nothing ugly, we just realised we’re not that compatible.”

“Oh? About time.” Dinah sounded genuinely relieved. “How are you feeling about it?”

Roy took in a steadying breath. “Um… mixed bag, honestly. I know we did the right thing, but it kind of leaves a sour taste to think that we were so mercenary we made the mistakes we did in the first place, you know. Love, relationships, they’re such sacred concepts, when you’re young. Then you blink and— and the years just pass you by. Suddenly love can’t conquer all, hell, love can’t seem to conquer _shit_. You might love and still need to turn to something else. You might love and… still have to let go.”

Dinah made a pitying sound, and pulled him into a sideways hug. “I’m sorry, Roy.”

“Nothing we can do about it, Di. This just isn’t the life where I get to have it all, I guess. I’m in love. I’m mostly happy, but I can’t have him. Yet— if I had to make the choice between complete happiness and him, well. That’s a no-brainer. More fool me.” He sighed, longsuffering. “Whatever, I’ll get over it. No point stressing out about something that’s beyond my control. Dick does, all the time, and look at what it did to him.”

“That’s a brave, brave thing you said.” Dinah smiled, pride in her eyes. “You know how Ollie’s obsessed with medieval concepts? He told me once about this thing called courtly love. It’s the idea that the noblest form of love is the kind that forever goes unfulfilled. Because then it becomes a love for love’s sake, see. Not what you can get out of it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I see how that would be,” Roy mused.

“I know it’s… little consolation, Roy, but—” Dinah seemed to take a moment to choose her words, then enveloped him in a warm embrace. “Even if it never works out between you two, there’s no regret in having loved someone at all. Believe me.”

He hugged back, burying his head in her shoulder for a long, indulgent while. “Thanks, Di.”

The low-priority alarm summoning them to a meeting interrupted him then, and Dinah gave him a brisk pat as she stepped back. “Come on. We’ll pick this up later.”

“Let’s go be heroes, or something,” Roy agreed, smiling half-heartedly.

* * *

“So our targeted researchers were confirmed to have worked with Time Pool technology and Zeta Beam technology. As for the Flash Museum, we know the Cosmic Treadmill was taken.” Dinah set her reports down with a frustrated sigh. “Not that that makes any sense to me, and we can’t ask anyone from S.T.A.R. Labs to help piece together what that would build, they’re targets as it is already… my vote is to send this on to somebody more low profile. Darwin Jones, for instance.”

“On it.” Mari nodded, then took the file from Dinah and left to do just that.

“I didn’t piece it together until Wings mentioned the same thing was happening in Gotham, but— you know how I was so busy?” Wally frowned. “I was inundated by a bunch of B-List villains that weren’t even local. Thought it was weird that the threats seemed more about quantity than severity…”

“You’re saying…?”

He nodded. “Prometheus’s plan was probably to keep us distracted by the random attacks while he finishes building this… whatever it is.”

“You and the Bats aren’t the only ones. Crimson Avenger and the Guardian—”

“Alert from Hawkman!” Kendra burst into the room, cutting in. “Ira Quimby – he’s a rogue, a scientist, one of ours – Carter just found him crawling the streets. Uh, literally. He sounds delirious or something, but he’s raving about one name – _Prometheus_. Dinah, dispatch me, we can bring him in for questioning.”

Dinah’s eyes went wide. “Go. And keep Mari updated while she still has Darwin on JLA channels.”

“Roger.”

Roy watched the flurry of movement dispassionately, his mind too busy wondering where Dick was. Try as he might to get his head in the game, a stubborn sense of general anxiety gripped at his heart, and when the door he was leaning next to finally opened to those familiar footsteps, he couldn’t help the relieved breath that escaped him.

“Hey,” he whispered, grabbing Dick by the arm before he could pass unnoticed. “Sorry if I was pushy this morning.”

He couldn’t tell what Dick was thinking, behind that mask, but a hand came up to touch Roy’s, nudging it away gently. “You did nothing wrong. Did Kendra tell you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we broke up.” Roy hesitated. “You knew. Why didn’t you just tell me yourself?”

“I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.” Dick’s smile was self-deprecating, breaking Roy’s heart. “I was prepared to let you live a lie if it meant you were with anyone else but me.”

“Still? You’re still determined to paint yourself the villain?” Roy sent him an imploring look. “Why’d you tell Kendra to ’fess up earlier, then?”

Dick laughed, silent and bitter. “Because I don’t want the guilt of being some home-wrecking _slut_ on my conscience, Roy, stop reading good intentions into everything I do.”

He tried to push past, but Roy simply shifted his grip to Dick’s wrist, stopping him from going any further. “…Always said the gods gave you that venomous tongue to offset such a pretty face,” he remarked, wryly, under his breath.

Dick’s hand in his was trembling ever so slightly. “Yeah, well, a pretty face won’t last forever, and then you’ll just be left with the venom.”

With that, he shook Roy off and went on forward, leaving him hollow.

“Sorry I’m late. Go on, Dinah, I’ll get up to speed on my own.”

“Great. Flash, here, list of the cities invaded by out-of-town villains – get a communiqué out that the heroes might be fighting the wrong culprits.”

“You got it. …And… done.”

“Dinah! Darwin thinks he knows what this is!”

“Excellent, Mari. Get him on the central monitors.”

Roy felt detached from the moment, even as the giant screen came to life with an age-lined face. “—Clever amalgamation of this kind of technology… the most likely conclusion in my opinion is some kind of teleportation device with one hell of a scope—”

Ollie was asking, “Able to teleport a person?”

“No. Bigger.”

“ _Groups_ of people?”

“Even bigger. With this kind of technology, you could teleport a city. Granted, it would require an immense amount of power and a large, specialised computer system…”

Giving up, Roy sighed and pushed off the wall he was leaning against. “I’ll be right back, I’m just going to call home. Lian should be awake by now,” he announced, to whoever cared.

Hal, standing closest to him, nodded with an understanding smile. “Go ahead. Use the monitor room, we got things here. Give her and Mia my best.”

“I will, thanks.”

With a sigh, Roy made his way out, ignoring the way that Dick’s head turned to look. The relative emptiness of the monitor room gave him some space to get his head on straight, at least, and he took a minute to himself before he dialled Ollie’s. Mia and Lian were both onscreen when the call went through, and their smiles made him feel degrees better already.

“Good morning, Roy!”

“Daddy!”

“Morning, Mi. Hey, sweetheart. You miss me last night?”

“Yeah. But Aunt Mia let me have _two_ cookies _and_ ice-cream after dinner.”

“Lian! You weren’t supposed to tell!”

“Oh, sorry…”

Roy couldn’t help laughing in spite of himself. “I hope she wasn’t any trouble, Mi.”

“I resent the implication that _my_ niece is anything but an angel around me. No fuss at all.” Mia snuggled up to Lian, cheek against cheek, earning a delighted giggle from the rascal in question.

“Of course not.” Roy snorted, amused. “I’ll see if I can get back earlier tonight to make up for it. You hear that, princess?”

“Yay!”

“By the way, Roy, Wally came by a second ago to say Connor and I shouldn’t be answering any alerts—”

“You got that right. Stay put, keep the girls with you. Something big might be going down.”

“Yeah, Sin’s upstairs with Connor. Kyle’s coming over, too.”

“Good, that’s reassuring. Lian, you do what they say, sweetie, okay? Remember what Daddy taught you, if you get scared?”

“Scream _Superman_ as loud as I can?”

“…I meant the breathing exercises, but hey, that works too.”

“Don’t worry about her, Roy, we got it covered,” Mia assured him with a wave of her hand. “Focus on watching the old man’s ass, he’s starting to lose his touch.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

“’S’why I did.”

“Tell him also I said hi and Dinah and Uncle Dick and Auntie Donna too…”

Roy chuckled. “I will. Be good. Be safe. I’ll see you both later.”

“Kick some ass, Roy.”

“Love you, Dad!”

“Love you more.” Roy was still smiling softly at the screen as it went black. Movement reflected against it caught his eye, then, and he turned, surprised. “Oh, hey, Freddy.”

Freddy Freeman gave him a vague smile in response. “Cute kid.”

“Thanks. Sorry, did you need to make a call?”

“No, no – don’t worry about it. It didn’t look like I was needed out there, so I thought I’d explore a little.” He sounded sheepish. “I haven’t been Shazam long, so I haven’t really been on the JLA satellite before.”

“Oh, okay, I see.” Roy shrugged.

Then the words registered, and he felt the cold settle in the pit of his stomach. “Yeah… it’s pretty overwhelming at first, isn’t it,” he said, desperate to keep him talking, while his hands, casually as he could, typed in the redial key combination.

“That’s one word for it. I’m a huge fan, though, so it’s like a dream come true.”

“I’m sure it is,” Roy muttered. As soon as Mia’s confused face reappeared onscreen, he yelled, “Speedy! Get on the comms and tell Ollie I’m in here!” – and quick as lightning, slammed the red button that triggered the room’s lockdown mechanism. He whirled around without waiting for a reaction from either of them, throwing the whole weight of his body at the Freddy impostor, and knocking him to the ground. His target flailed, but there it was – a fluctuating pulse around his person, like a glitch in a video game. Roy wasted no time. He punched, _hard_.

It landed, and the simulation of Shazam’s face and uniform dissolved in a scattering of pixels. Left behind was a person in a purple costume reminiscent of a medieval knight, and Roy was glad to note his mouth was bleeding where his fist had connected. “Damn.” Whoever it was moved his jaw around like he was checking if a tooth had broken. “How did you know?”

By this point, Roy was already on his feet, one arrow pointed straight down and between the impostor’s eyes. “You said _Shazam_ and nothing happened.”

“Oh. Oh, that was careless of me.” His smile was slow and unsettling. “Archers. Always so observant.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Prometheus. I thought you knew.” He stood up and dusted himself off, far too calm, like he _didn’t_ have a broadhead trained on him. “So how does this work? We can’t get out unless someone opens the door from the outside, is it?”

“There’ll be a whole army waiting on the other side when that does happen, bastard.” Roy narrowed his eyes. “What are you after?”

Prometheus chuckled. “You, my friend, do not rank high enough for me to waste my words on.”

And then, with a simple flick of his wrist, sharp discs were whirling through the air straight at Roy. He ducked, and ducked, and ducked again, but with impossible agility Prometheus caught up— blinding pain shot through the right side of his face as a hand grabbed his head and _slammed_ it through the nearest monitor. Staggering, Roy pushed the knowledge of electrical burns and glass in his eye and _fuck what is an archer without his whole vision_ to the back of his mind, catching Prometheus on the chin with a backward head-butt. He clutched at the desk for balance, slid one throwing knife out of its sheath on his leg, flung it blindly.

There. Again. Prometheus dodged it like— like— but— “They said you were _non-meta_.”

“Oh, I am, I am. Isn’t it wonderful?” Prometheus’s grin widened manically.

“You _can’t_ be as fast as the Flash—”

Between one blink and the next Prometheus was right in front of him, and Roy was struggling to keep him at bay with his bow— when did he get harder to push off— “Fast as the Flash. Strong as Superman. Humans are resourceful creatures. We can be anything we want to be.” Roy’s bow broke under his insistent push, with a sickening _crunch_. “Well. I _am_ generalising. It depends on natural selection among us too, eh…”

“Who needs archery, anyway,” Roy muttered, swiftly ducking into a drop sweep, but Prometheus only laughed in amusement even as Roy succeeded and he fell.

“That’s right – you were Arsenal. Able to turn anything into a weapon. And even when there isn’t anything around, you still have two lethal weapons. Your fists. Trained by Black Canary herself, is that correct?”

Roy’s eyes widened as another flick of the wrist sent another round of those discs spinning through the air in a wide curve headed for his face, and he ducked again—

Mistake. Distraction. He registered Prometheus’s grin. The bloodstained blade he was brandishing. The pain in his own arm. Not his arm, because his arm was— falling to the ground—

“Make that _one_ fist.” His gleeful laugh echoed in Roy’s head, and then the pain was too much to bear, and he dropped.

Vaguely, he registered the doors sliding open. Shouting— flashes of various kinds of meta-human power beams flying over his head, people running. Someone was shouting his name, over and over again, and then a blur of black-and-blue like a pretty monarch butterfly…

Head cushioned against that familiar lap, Roy couldn’t help thinking, _Hey, haven’t we been here before?_

(Dick is yelling for S.T.A.R.’s specialised superhero first response team to take him first, he’s in pain, and Roy realises he’s been mumbling that it hurts, and someone tells Dick they’re trying to transport Congorilla and the Flash too, and Dick’s voice goes a whole level louder and shriller, _This man has gone through heroin withdrawal Cold Turkey, been shot point blank five times in the chest, has had his neck sliced open and stopped the blood with his bare hands, so help me do you fucking understand, if he says he’s in pain, he’s in pain_ —)

His next thought was, _Oh, Pretty Bird, you’re kneeling in my blood, it’ll get all over_ …

(Dick is shushing him, telling him he’s going to be okay, though his voice is shaking too much to sell it really, Roy isn’t sure if he said anything or if Dick knows him just that well but now it’s the mask that’s coming off—)

His first last thought was, _Lian_.

(If those ocean-blues swimming over with tears are the only thing he will ever see again, Roy thinks he’s done pretty well for himself, in this life—)

His final last thought was, _Dinah was right_.

(Dick.)

 _No regrets_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So at this point you’re meant to go and listen to [Landslide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4M53xndqiU), it’s, like, part of the experience or whatever.


	7. Finale

_Life… is not the thing romance writers describe it; going through the measures of a dance, and after various evolutions arriving at a conclusion, when the dancers may sit down and repose. While there is life there is action and change. We go on, each thought linked to the one which was its parent, each act to a previous act. No joy or sorrow dies barren of progeny, which forever generated and generating, weaves the chain that makes our life: one day calls to another day; and so it calls again and links cry to cry and pain to pain._

– Mary Shelley, The Last Man

Time stopped moving in a logical progression. Dick felt like his own heart was being ripped out of his chest, as S.T.A.R.’s field medics took Roy from his arms, loading his unconscious body onto a stretcher. There was a pool of blood on the floor all around him, and— he fought down the nausea, a _severed limb_ just metres away— those hands, those hands that had so often held him in their strong yet gentle embrace whenever he felt like he couldn’t bear to face the world alone— those hands that could aim with deadly accuracy and make sweet music and cradle their baby girl—

_Prometheus. Prometheus did this._

Shaking with a blinding rage, Dick got up off his knees, picking up the red arrows scattered around the room, restringing Roy’s broken bow, forcing the two stumps of wood back together, with the piece of Roy’s uniform that had been sliced off along with his left hand. The fight outside had gone on long enough, since he’d found Roy and refused to leave his side until he was sure Roy got medical attention, but Prometheus had yet to be subdued.

It was like fighting Amazo, Dick observed, detached. The bastard was prepared for everybody. Kara got taken down by bullets cased in (he could hear Prometheus bragging) a special metal he bought from the Amazons, forged by Vulcan himself. Zatanna was rendered inaudible by some type of beam, Doctor Light by some reflective shield. Dinah and Ollie – the most distraught aside from Dick himself – were tricked into accidentally attacking each other by that irritating tech that allowed Prometheus to take on their likenesses.

With all the patience Bruce had ever instilled in him, Dick stuck to the shadows, holding himself back from the urge to step in and protect his colleagues, observing Prometheus’s attack patterns and analysing them, as fast as his mind could. There. Kory managed to hit him with one of her quicker solar beams. He retaliated a split second after, but the fact that he’d required the second at all was telling. Okay, more credence to the Amazo analogy, then. And whatever technology he was using, if it enabled him to take on full-body disguises, it had to extend— that’s it. The suit. The suit itself was rigged. Where would the mainframe most likely be? No nanotechnology would have progressed so far as to install it into fabric, so… the helmet.

Dick followed Prometheus into one of the hallways, where Hal intercepted him. Good. Hal was fighting bravely. Dick stayed behind the wall, nocking an arrow into place. When he peered around the corner, movement from the opposite hallway caught his eye, and while Hal unknowingly kept Prometheus distracted, Dick gestured at Donna to wait. Her eyes went wide, but she did. With no further delay, Dick took aim, and released.

Roy’s arrow flew true for its master, lodging right into the back of the helmet. Taking no chances, Dick shot again, and again, and again. Prometheus was screaming, electric sparks shooting all around his head from the tampered computer until he had no choice but to yank the thing off or risk getting his brain fried. Dick yelled, “Donna, now!”

She took to it with vengeful glee, launching herself at Prometheus and beating him bloody with her iron fists. Dick took some sadistic pleasure in letting it happen, but reason won out in the end and he reluctantly called, “Enough, Don, you’ll kill him.”

“I want to kill him,” she hissed, but it was more a confession than a threat, and she let Hal use his ring to restrain him with a constructed cage instead.

And then those of them who weren’t incapacitated were given the displeasure of interrogating the sick bastard. “Oh, is this the part where I give you all a villain monologue?” he grinned, like he wasn’t chained to a chair with several of the world’s greatest heroes surrounding him. “Where should we start, my sob story?”

Dick backhanded him across the face, partly to shut him up, partly because he could. “What were you after?”

“In general, or by infiltrating you as young Freddy? Never mind, I can answer both. I didn’t think you’d wise up so quickly, but too bad…”

Another hit, this time just because it fucking _felt good_. “I’ll only ask one more time. What. Were. You. After.”

Prometheus laughed, spitting out blood. “Oh, I’m sorry – you didn’t answer when I asked where I should start. Well… I was a nobody, you know, and the advantage of being a nobody is that no one pays you much attention. So I managed to fly under the radar, trading in secrets. Until I’d amassed enough secrets to blackmail— oh, far too many people. Starting with dear Quimby. I made him build my suit and helmet for me after a blueprint similar to Amazo’s…”

“And then you did something to his sanity so he would keep quiet,” Kendra accused.

Prometheus shrugged. “A simple chemical in his food and drink, administered over time. It caused mental retardation.”

“What’s the device for?”

“Didn’t Doctor Jones say? Teleportation. Using the secrets I tortured out of those brilliant minds you were out to avenge, I created gateways in time, space, and dimensions… you see, as a child I would often ask myself, but what _makes_ a hero, a hero? And, of course— if anything is only as strong as its weakest part, that was the same as asking, what is a hero’s greatest weakness?” He turned to look at Hal with a disturbing grin. “Green Lantern gave me the answer… when he lost his mind after Coast City fell.”

“You bastard—”

Ollie shot an arm out to stop Hal from going any further, his eyes on Prometheus cold.

“Yes, I thought – what would a hero be without their city? What if I set up such a device in every single one of your precious cities while you were all distracted by the crisis, and teleported half of each away, into— well, it doesn’t really matter where. So long as you all lived with the awareness that it was _somewhere_.”

“Teleport half of the city?” Dinah frowned, her eyes narrowing. “Why not just destroy them?”

“…Any old villain could set up a bomb and blow a city up, it’s been done.” Ollie’s voice was deadly calm. “This piece of shit doesn’t want to give us the option of accepting that nothing was left to be done, if our cities were wiped out. No, with a plan like that, we’d have had to live knowing that half of our people were still alive, out of reach, where we couldn’t save them.”

Prometheus laughed maniacally. “Somehow, I’d fantasised that Batman would be the one saying that back to me. Such a pity…”

Dick punched him in the gut before he could get another word out. “Keep his name out of your mouth, you _son of a bitch_ —”

“But of course, I needed a more powerful computer than mine to run the devices, which I would have used the JLA mainframe for, as Freddy Freeman. No matter. There’s always a Plan B.”

Kory stalked forward, her arm wrapped in a bright beam. “You’d better start talking about this Plan B. Right. Now.”

“Hmm? Well, you caught me, didn’t you? Obviously my next move is to escape.” He smiled, slow and deliberate. “No, not escape. You will let me go. Sooner rather than later, in fact.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Like I said, Red Arrow regrettably got in my way before I could access the Watchtower’s computer, so I can’t power _all_ the devices. However, my own mainframe is already connected to one. A backup, you understand. Let me go, and I’ll gladly tell you where it’s situated, as well as the code to deprogram it.”

Ollie’s rage was predictable. “Bullshit! No way you walk! My son is maimed! Half of the League is messed up!”

“Ironic that it’s you who protests, Green Arrow,” said Prometheus, serene.

“Ironic…” Ollie stilled. “What do you mean by ironic?”

“The backup device.” Prometheus smiled. “It’s in Star City. As a matter of fact, it should almost be…” his eyes flicked to the nearest clock. “Ah, yes. It would have started five minutes ago.”

With a noise like he’d been punched, Ollie whirled around. “I need visual on my fucking city!”

“On it!” Mari raced to the nearest monitor and turned it on. A news report flashed onscreen, _Evacuations in progress as Star City hit by series of devastating earthquakes_ …

“The teleportation process is only beginning, Green Arrow.” Prometheus’s smile turned wicked. “You have an hour to disable the device before you say goodbye to half of your city… forever.”

Dick felt like the floor was falling away from his feet as realisation hit— “Ollie, _Lian_. We have to let him go, Lian is—”

“Yeah.” Ollie’s hands balled into fists at his side, trembling with rage. “Yeah. Tell me the code, motherfucker. And then run. As far as your little legs can take you. Because from the second you step out of those restraints—” He glanced up, the look in his eyes razor-sharp and chilling. “There _will_ be a hunter on the chase.”

* * *

He could not bear to be Dick Grayson just yet. He forced his mind not to deviate from Nightwing, not until they had all raced to Star and disabled the device and found the Queen-Lance house – thank all the saints – in one piece, protected by Kyle’s ring. Lian kept asking for her father and could not be consoled until she had seen him. Dick stayed away, a useless parental figure as per, unable to stand how her grief reminded him of his own. Her real family stayed with her instead, and someone must have told Jade because a suspiciously unmarked car pulled into the driveway and the woman in question spilled out, scooping her daughter up into a tight hug. “Oh, thank God, you’re okay…”

Dazed, Dick followed after Dinah, Ollie, and Connor as soon as the city was secured and they prepared to board the jet again. “I know— I know I’m not family, but please, can I come…”

“Of course you can,” Connor said kindly, then turned to his father with a severe look. “Of course he can.”

But the advocacy turned out to be unnecessary, Ollie too preoccupied to object at all. The flight to S.T.A.R. was quiet and Dick struggled to hold onto his mask for just a while longer – just until he could see Roy again – and then they were there, rushing to the sick bay, the hallways full to bursting with other heroes present to check on everybody else who had been wounded.

“I’m so sorry, we’re packed, visitors will have to go in two at a time,” one attendant hurried to tell them, genuine sympathy in her voice. “Next of kin only.”

“Dinah—” Ollie began, hoarse, but out of sheer desperation Dick cut in.

“I’m his husband.”

They all stared at him, wide-eyed, and Dick fought not to back down, eyes on the attendant and the attendant alone.

“You’re his what…?” Ollie repeated. The attendant, oblivious to the tension, was checking her tablet.

“Mr. Richard John Grayson?”

“Harper.” Dick swallowed. “That’s correct.”

“Alright, you and Mr. Queen…”

Without waiting for Ollie to recover from the surprise, Dick marched on forward behind her. They rounded the corner and were gestured into one of the rooms, and a medic was leaving just as they got there. “He’s fighting for his life, Mr. Queen, he’s lost a lot of blood,” was the answer to Ollie’s frantic question, “But don’t lose hope, we’re working as hard as we can to—”

Dick only heard the rest of the words as if they were spoken to him underwater, and before he knew it the medic was gone, leaving them alone outside that forbidding door behind which Roy— God, Roy was _fighting for his life_.

“Dick…” Ollie’s voice held none of the antagonism it usually did of late, reminding Dick of simpler times, when he was only Roy’s friend who came over to play sometimes, not the heartless jerk who walked out of his life. “I can wait, if you want to go change. You’re covered in blood.”

Dick glanced down. Oh. All this red, it used to be in Roy’s body, and now it wasn’t in Roy’s body, and Roy could be in there dy—

“ _Whoa._ ” Ollie’s hand steadied him by the shoulder as he staggered. “You going to be sick?”

“No… I won’t, I…” Dick blinked slowly, wearily, already feeling reality slip away, uncaring that he was bracing himself against Ollie’s chest, one unfamiliar but paternal arm holding him up. “I’m… just… going to… check out for a while… think…”

Oblivion was a mercy – but it didn’t last, and when the crash hit it hit _hard_. Dick had no strength to fight off the tears, though at least he was spared some dignity by their relative silence, save for the occasional sniff. Wordlessly, Ollie handed him a tissue (they were sitting, when had they moved to the benches in the corner, was it to shield him from the over-bright light), and he said in a quiet, uncharacteristically sympathetic voice, “You with us?”

Dick nodded slowly.

“Catatonia’s a sign of some serious PTSD, kid.”

It took him what felt like a whole minute to remember _words-mouth-move_ , but at last he managed, “I already have a therapist, Ollie. I don’t need two.”

Ollie shook his head, pitying. “So much makes sense now. When did you and Roy marry?”

“As teens. When you and Bruce abandoned us and we had to look out for each other.” But he couldn’t be bothered to put any bite into it, nor did Ollie rise to the bait, for once. “Dinah found out at… one point, but I think even she assumed we broke it off after— after.”

“How it must have felt to hear your husband tell you he was getting engaged…” Ollie pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Damn, Roy’s determined to make all of my mistakes but with twice the good intentions.”

Flushing with indignation, Dick started to protest, “He’s—”

“—Ten times the man I am, I’m aware,” Ollie finished for him with a dismissive wave. “The better archer, father, fighter, but still prone to being obtuse as a rock, trust me, it’s a family thing.”

“Fuck you, Roy’s the most empathetic person I know – I’m the one who pushed him away, all he was, was loyal.”

Ollie arched an eyebrow. “Awfully defensive for somebody who chose to leave him in the first place.”

“That’s…” Dick’s hands clenched around the edge of his seat. “I did it for his own good. You of all people should approve.”

“I did, at first, but why the hell should you care what I think?” Ollie challenged. “You have got to realise you need to fight for what you want.”

“Just because I want it doesn’t mean I should have it.”

Ollie’s eyes on him were kind and understanding and uncomfortably fatherly, and Dick couldn’t help but to feel something like grief being looked at like that. _Wrong person_. “You know you don’t have to feel guilty over wanting something for yourself at all, don’t you? Man, Bruce fucked you up good. Which is it, that you can’t stand to be anything but responsible for others, or an abject fear of failure that has you convinced you’re destined to fuck everything up?”

Dick bit at his lower lip to stop it from trembling, and he didn’t want to consider the words, he could only shoot back, “When the hell did you switch sides? Don’t pretend to know me.”

“So I’ve been an asshole to you, that _really_ shouldn’t be news to anybody who’s met me.” Ollie dismissed. “I’m on the side of Roy’s happiness. And whether you believe me or not, yours too, I kind of feel sorry for you.”

“Why?”

“People need a reason to care now? That’s a whole new level of trust issues.” Ollie laughed under his breath. “Fine, how’s about this – you’re married to my son, which makes you one of mine. You sure as hell shoot like one of mine, I saw you deck Prometheus.”

Dick shook his head in disbelief. “Ollie, I can’t— I can’t guarantee Roy’s happiness. You said it yourself, I have too many issues.”

“Yeah? Neither can I. Neither can anybody. That’s just life,” Ollie returned. “One damn thing after another. You can’t be in control of everything one hundred percent of the time. Don’t promise him complete happiness, then – promise him pockets of it, in the mire of suffering that we call _being fucking human_. That’s all anybody can do, at the end of the day, is try. You know?”

“If it isn’t too late. If by some merciful saint I’m given another chance to.” Dick buried his face in his hands, distraught. “I’ll swear anything if Roy makes it…”

“…I’m sure you would, Dick. I’m sure you would…” With a weary sigh, Ollie stood up, giving him a squeeze on the shoulder as he did. “You going to be okay getting grounded, or should I call for a doctor?”

“I’m fine… where are you going?”

Ollie casually put his mask back on. “Sounds to me like you have more to say to him when he wakes up than I do, for the minute. I can’t face my son until I’m at least a step closer to catching the bastard that did this.”

“I want to—” Dick started to stand, but Ollie shot an arm out to stop him.

“No. I got enough blood on my hands that this shitstain’s won’t make a difference on my soul. You keep yours clean.”

“Mine aren’t as spotless as you think.”

“Keep them as clean as they are at the moment, then.”

“But—”

“Roy wouldn’t want it,” Ollie insisted, shutting down any further argument. “I’ll leave the home front to you.”

And with that, he pulled his hood up, then turned to walk away. Shoulders falling, Dick sat back down. Nothing left to do but wait.

* * *

Roy came to in the early hours of the morning. Dick knew because he hadn’t left his bedside since the medic came to tell him that Roy was going to pull through, and he hadn’t allowed his tired body to sleep a wink, either. Framed by all those contraptions and the deathly-white bedsheets, it felt like Roy could just… disappear, and Dick refused to take his eyes off of him for fear of it. One of his hands was stroking Roy’s hair, the other wrapped around his fingers. He had thought he’d be prepared to see those precious green eyes open again, but when it happened, it still felt like a miracle, still took his breath away.

“Hey,” he whispered, as if afraid to disturb the air itself. Comprehension took its sweet time settling in Roy’s gaze, then at last it did, and he smacked his lips a few times.

“…Lian?”

“With her mom,” Dick assured him. “She’s fine, _trésor_. Not a scratch on her.”

Closing his eyes, Roy nodded, satisfied, the simple movement seemingly requiring a Herculean effort. “Mm. Damn. Morphine. I hate that I miss it.”

Dick raised Roy’s hand to his lips, earning himself a small, sad smile.

“Can’t feel the other one, so it must be gone.” He visibly swallowed. “Dick?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want to look.”

As if it had been a command, Dick shielded his head from turning, pressing soft kisses all over his face instead. “Oh, Roy, you were so brave, I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you…”

Roy’s smile was tight and pained. In a hoarse voice, and with wetter eyes than Dick would have preferred, he admitted, “This is one of those times I can’t be strong for you, baby, so please, is it okay if I just want comforting…”

Dick couldn’t help the answering sting in his own eyes, and he pressed a firmer, lingering kiss against Roy’s temple, ignoring the way their tears mingled. “Don’t lose hope. I called Vic, he insists on making you a prosthetic himself. State of the art tech, he says with enough time and training you’ll be back to shooting targets with hardly any issues.”

“Takes more than two hands to shoot, Dickie, the bastard got my dominant eye, too.” With some fumbling, Roy reached up to feel the bandages covering the right side of his face. “Burns scar, as well… I know I was never much of a looker compared to you, but…”

“That is _not_ true, you’re—”

“I said _compared to you_ , that’s just fact, I’m not being modest.” A bitter smile. “You’re out of this world.”

“Whatever scars there’ll be, all they would prove is that you were ready to put your life on the line to do your duty,” Dick stubbornly insisted. “If that isn’t the most beautiful thing…”

“They would also void any hope of a secret identity.” Roy’s voice faltered, and he took a moment to inhale a steadying breath. “I, um… I-I really liked being on the Justice League, you know…”

Without a word, Dick wrapped both arms around Roy’s shoulders, burying his face in his neck, riding out the full-body trembles, the hitched breathing, the increasing wetness against his hair. In that moment, he made a choice. And he knew, no matter how significant it was, that he would never live to regret it. “Roy.”

Roy nodded his acknowledgment, apparently not ready to speak yet.

Dick shut his eyes tight. “If you have to hang it up… I will, too.”

He felt Roy stiffen in his arms, and then he was being nudged away gently, wide eyes seeking out his. “You… but… why would you… for me?”

Dick laughed, wry. “I guess I deserve that.”

“No, I’m— Dick, that’s a _huge_ decision— what about Bruce?”

“I started this for Bruce. Because I wanted to save him from himself. I was naïve to think I could, Jason more than proved that.” Dick shook his head ruefully. “I’m old enough to understand— that if Bruce doesn’t want help, he can’t be helped. And I am burning myself up for him for no real reason, other than love. There’s nothing I could contribute to the mission that he doesn’t get in the rest of the family. I know that I’ll need to prove myself to you all over again, but believe me, I would give it up for you in a heartbeat.”

Roy looked so lost, so awed. “Give it up for… what, exactly? What would be next?”

“I don’t know yet.” Dick buried his head in Roy’s chest, letting the tears of remorse fall. “But if you can still find it in your heart to, please, Roy, dream us a new dream…”

Roy’s hand tangled itself in his hair, and he welcomed the brush of lips and stubble against his temple. “Okay. Okay. Let’s figure out how to be people together, then.”

“People in love, if you meant it when you said you forgive me…”

“As much as you did when you forgave me.”

“We’re a mess.”

“Maybe that’s the point.” Roy held him tight. “Dick, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and— I think I said the wrong vows to begin with. Fifty-fifty, it’s too neat for you and me. I want to make a little addendum to it, if that’s okay with you, precious.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ll take fifty percent of your baggage, if you take fifty percent of mine.” A pause. “And— when you’re in a place too dark to be able to handle that much, I’ll take— eighty. Ninety. As much as you need, until you can pick up your share again. Because that’s what you did for me.” He smiled. “So please, say you’ll accept it, and stop feeling so guilty about it that you pull away. I think— I think it’s just what love is.”

The tears welled over again. “If I’d thought of it that way from the start, I would never have—”

“ _Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars._ ” Roy’s smile was all warmth again, no sorrow. “Can’t turn back time. It’s okay. We’ll try again, hmm?”

“I don’t want to sign the annulment papers. I don’t.”

Roy pressed a sweet kiss to his forehead. “My uniform – there’s a hidden inner pocket. Right next to where my heart would be. Go check.”

Nodding, Dick sat up, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and made for where Roy’s uniform was hanging behind the door. He fumbled around for a while, and then he found it. Smiling in spite of himself, Dick fished the ring out, bringing it back to Roy. “Oh, _chéri_ …”

“I don’t fight without it. Less of a good luck charm and more of a reminder that I have somebody I need to stick around for, because he just can’t seem to look after his own damn self.”

“Guilty. Guilty, but I have you.” Dick let himself be pulled down into a hug, resting his head against Roy’s chest. “Don’t let me take it for granted ever again.”

* * *

He didn’t consider how surprised Tim would be to find his brother barging into his room days after he was supposed to be on some big mission, but in Dick’s defence he didn’t know if and when Tim would be home, these days. “Uh, hey,” Tim said, wary, looking up from where he’d been lying on his stomach in bed, reading a comic.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t think you were in.” But having said that, Dick still proceeded to rummage through the drawers, the closet, the boxes on top of the closet… “Don’t mind me, just trying to find something I left in here ages ago…”

“Clearly.” Tim sounded confused. “You need any help? What is it, exactly?”

Dick made a happy noise, having found his treasure jammed in between two drawers. “Never mind, got it – thanks, Timmy!”

“Don’t… mention it?”

Heart beating too fast to pay much attention, Dick left the room, throwing a hasty wave over his shoulder. He paused in the hallway to slip the ring on, his fingers shaking ever so slightly. It still fit like a puzzle piece. He smiled to himself, taking the steps to downstairs two at a time.

“What’d you call us over for, Dick?” Donna asked, waiting for him at the bottom, hands on her hips. He glanced from her, to Kory, to Wally, all wearing identical questioning looks on their faces – and had to fight back laughter.

“It’s not a problem, is it? You guys haven’t been in the manor in years. Kory’s _never_ been, actually.”

“Yeah, for a reason,” Wally pointed out, one eyebrow raised. “Thought your old man didn’t appreciate meta-humans on his turf. Never mind in his house.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t be staying long. Just for brunch.”

As if on cue, Alfred emerged from the dining room, gesturing toward the door with his arm. “The table has been laid out for company as requested, Master Richard…”

“You’re a gem, Alfie. Make yourselves at home, guys, I’ll go get Bruce.” Ignoring the further confusion that this statement elicited, Dick rushed back upstairs, straight for the study.

“Bruce?” He pushed the door open, hesitant. “Can I come in?”

“Dick?” From behind his desk, Bruce glanced up, surprised. “If this is about the Prometheus case, Dinah already sent her brief through. So you chose not to follow my advice to drop it. But why allow their splinter group to use the Watchtower? That was a poor decision from a team politics standpoint—”

“You’re absolutely right. I step down as interim leader,” Dick answered, and it was almost worth it just for the floored look on Bruce’s face.

“You step down? But I didn’t mean—”

“Never mind that, Bruce. Will you come down for brunch? I brought some friends over.”

“You brought…?”

“I haven’t seen the Titans in ages, I knew you wouldn’t mind. Come on. Alfred made those sausages you like.”

Without waiting for a response, Dick helped push his wheelchair out, Bruce too speechless to protest. They were halfway past the first corridor when a loud car horn sounded, and Dick stopped to bite back his smile, leaving Bruce for a minute to look out the window.

Parked in the street below was a beaten-down truck. He watched Roy step out of it, dressed like freaking James Dean, leather, denim, shades. He glanced up as if he knew Dick was looking, a crooked grin on his face. Dick’s stomach did a complicated flip, and he returned to wheeling Bruce. “Right. Brunch.”

To the dining room they went, where Cass and Tim and Damian had all joined his friends around the table. “Bread roll, Master Bruce?” Alfred offered as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Dick, jittery with nerves, couldn’t sit, and he kept an eye on the door instead. A moment later, Roy entered.

“Sorry I’m late— oh, hey, the whole team’s here.” Roy arched a quizzical eyebrow at Dick.

He shrugged, sheepish. “Expediency’s sake. And you’re _early_ , actually, nobody’s had a chance to even eat.”

“What’s this really about?” Tim spoke up, utterly perplexed. “Because from contextual clues, it seems a lot like a family meeting… big announcement… thing.”

“Yeah, are you about to say Harper knocked you up?” Wally asked through a mouth full of food – causing Tim a violent coughing fit.

Dick and Roy exchanged looks. “Do you want to wait, or…?” Roy offered, his voice soft and kind.

Dick took Roy’s hand. “I’ve waited long enough.”

“What is this, Dick?” Bruce demanded, sounding baffled.

Taking a deep and steadying breath, Dick faced the table. “So, the thing is… we’re married.”

Silence, for a while, and then Kory let out a little whoop. “You two are getting married? That’s wonderful news!”

“No, no. We _are_ married.” Dick smiled up at Roy as he wrapped his arm around Dick’s waist. “We’ve been married for the past… is it ten years? A little over.”

Even more silence, and the tea Alfred was pouring Bruce was spilling over his cup, but neither of them seemed to notice.

“Ten…?” Bruce repeated, his face losing all colour. “But— you’d have been only—”

“What, you didn’t think somebody would pick up your stray when you didn’t want him anymore?” Roy asked with a casual smirk, the hand on Dick’s waist moving subtly lower.

Oops, Bruce’s cup broke. Should have seen that coming.

“Anyway.” Dick pulled apart by the slightest of inches, in the hopes of sparing the two most important men in his life from antagonising each other to insanity. “What I wanted to say other than that is… I’ve spent more time than usual in Gotham, of late. And I hope I’ve done everything I was supposed to do, here. I think I have, anyway. I’d— like to be with my husband, now. In Star. But we’ll visit, if we’re welcome.”

“I _was_ wondering why Roy was so cheerful about recuperating.” Donna’s eyes were misted over. “Oh, you two deserve it…”

“Hold on— Star City?” Tim frowned. “But, uh, what about… him?” He jabbed a thumb in Damian’s direction.

Damian continued eating, serene. “Will you never learn to mind your own business, Drake? I’m going with them, of course.”

“You _what_!?”

Dick sighed, exasperated. “Demi— you promised you’d talk it over with your father, first.”

Damian set down his knife and fork – turning serious eyes to Bruce, who was clearly speechless. “Father. I have appreciated your hospitality. However, I am no fool. There’s only one person in this house who has not wanted to be rid of me, and I deduce therefore that it would be in my best interests to go with him. He asked. And promises Harper is… tolerable.”

“Not like _that_.” Dick ran a hand across his face. “God grant this family some _tact_ one of these days…”

“You’re my son,” Bruce protested, and Dick wasn’t sure which one of them he meant, but he stepped forward and placed a hand on Damian’s shoulder.

“What’s Damian’s favourite part of the meal today?”

Silence.

Dick smiled, rueful. “Bruce, I don’t fight you for much. You know that. I will fight you for this.”

He held his father’s gaze for as long as he could, and then Bruce turned away, brow creasing – with concern or frustration, Dick couldn’t tell. “Well, you’re a grown man fully capable of making his own decisions. What happens with Nightwing?”

Dick appreciated the supporting arm Roy brought up to wrap around his shoulder. “I… think I’ve done all I could as Nightwing. Our family’s constantly growing, now, Bruce, you don’t need me. I might put on the mask again, I don’t know, you’re all aware I’m married to the job first and foremost, but…” He glanced up at Roy, who sent an encouraging smile.

“Yeah. Dick and I are going to focus on building a normal life together for a while. I’d be useless on the field now, anyway.”

Something in Bruce’s expression closed off entirely, which is how Dick knew this hurt more than the rest of it. His own throat swelling, Dick met his eyes. “Bruce… I know I took an oath. And, I have kept it – not all these past seventeen years have been fuck-ups, surely. I _have_ been a good soldier. But the thing is, that’s all I have ever been. And… I’d really like to see what else there is to be, before time runs out.” He squeezed Roy’s hand. “The mission may be everything to you, but to me— what I come home to at the end of it is just as important. We both started out on this journey because we were mourning our families, didn’t we? …So what’s the point of it if we lose sight of the family we have?”

To Dick’s surprise, it wasn’t Bruce who reacted, but Tim, who got out of his chair, skirted the table, and enveloped Dick in an unexpected hug. He didn’t say a word, yet, somehow, Dick got the message, and he smiled as he hugged him back. Then Kory, Donna, and Wally were out of their chairs too, and Dick and Roy were inundated with hugs and congratulations.

“You fuck this up, you answer to me,” Wally warned Roy, but he was grinning.

“May you have all the happiness in the world, Dick,” Kory whispered into his hair.

“The only way I’m forgiving you both for not telling us you got married is if you make it work,” Donna warned, sniffing a little.

“…Thank you,” Dick said. To Bruce, to all of them.

Later, when they were ready to leave at long last, Dick gave both Alfred and Bruce his last hugs as they came out to see him and Roy off. Bruce even shook Roy’s hand, nodding sternly. “Well, I suppose…” he trailed off, clearing his throat. “I wish you luck.”

“Take good care of them both, Master Harper,” Alfred implored, taking it as well, and Dick was touched by the gruffness in his normally stoic voice.

Leaving them to it, Dick stepped aside, to where Damian was lurking behind the door, kneeling in front of him with a kind smile. “I’ll send for you as soon as we get the house in order. Are you sure you want this, Damian? If you’d prefer to continue training to be Robin, I’d understand.”

Damian gave him an unreadable look. “What _was_ my favourite part of the meal, then?”

“Sweet potatoes. You like them crispy.” Dick ruffled his hair. “You don’t hide your reactions as well as you think you do.”

“Or you pay too much attention, stupid Grayson,” he mumbled.

“Hmm?”

Damian glanced up. “I want to. Yes.”

“Alright.” Dick hugged him. “See you soon. Don’t stab anyone.”

“Dickie! You ready to go?”

With one last parting wave, Dick ran for his husband. They shared a brief and helpless kiss, and then Dick ducked under Roy’s arm to climb onto the driver’s seat before he could.

“Wha— hey! Vic didn’t give me a fancy robot arm so you could drive my truck for me!”

“Firstly, isn’t this Hal’s truck? And secondly, I’d want to drive even if everything of yours _was_ intact, my treasure.” Dick laughed. “I love you with all my heart, but how in the world did you ever get your license…”

“Nice. We’re already bickering like a married couple again.” Roy grinned, closing the door behind him. “If you drive, I get to pick the music.”

Dick sighed, fond. “Fine, subject me to niche punk until the first rest stop.”

“Actually, no, it’s the nineties nostalgia station, because I love you.”

“Aw.” Dick couldn’t help chuckling against Roy’s lips even as he was thoroughly kissed to the sound of ascending synthesisers.

A comfortable silence settled between them as Dick drove, but at length, a popular cover of that old Tracy Chapman song came on that made Roy laugh under his breath. Curious, Dick turned. “What?”

“Nothing. I used to think this song was so cheesy, when I was a kid,” Roy explained. “But with all that’s happened lately, I’m starting to wonder if the cheesy songs don’t have it right, after all.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, listen… we used to give love such grand significance. And then we grow up and think that’s immature, go the other extreme and say love is for children. But maybe the truth is somewhere in between. Sure, love can’t fix everything. Anyone whose love has been condemned would know that. But maybe― maybe the real power of love isn’t in what _it_ can conquer, but in what _we_ are able to conquer because of it. Maybe it in itself is really just as simple as― remembering to say the little things. Important things. Sorry. Forgive me. I love you.”

Dick nodded, slow and contemplative, and returned his eyes to the road with a soft, sad smile. “…Sorry. Forgive me. I love you.”

A pause, and then Roy surged to the side and pressed a firm kiss to Dick’s cheek. “We can learn to do simple again. We can. And— maybe there’s enough youth left in us to be a little reckless, too.”

“Roy, my heart, I have been through too much. Every morning I get to wake up next to you again is going to feel like a giant risk.” Dick chuckled, rueful. “My love is forever reckless.”

“Oh, Pretty Bird.” Roy took his hand where it was resting on the gearshift and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Then I’m honoured you’re taking your chances with me.”

Dick watched his bright eyes catch the sunlight, listened to that strident voice belting out – _Baby, can I hold you tonight, maybe if I told you the right words_ – and thought, well. It’s worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment below and let me know what you think! There will be an Ollie-centric sequel to this, which is why I’m making it a series, and I know nobody gives a shit about Ollie fic so I hope you’ll check it out if I plug it with the DickRoys, LMAO. Stay tuned ‒ and you can come follow me on Tumblr if you like, I’m puriskam.


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